In a Podgorica neighbourhood, a 19-year-old diesel Golf Mk5 is prepared before it reaches the rollers of a technical inspection. Mechanics are “stimulated” with a run on the edge of the city, dashboard warnings are bridged, and there is a friendly handshake with the workshop. The engine warning light is off, the DPF was removed long ago, and the exhaust hides the car’s real condition. For decades this has been part of local driving culture: the inspection is treated as an administrative hurdle that resourcefulness and a willing mechanic can get around.
Official figures describe a different economic and environmental picture. MONSTAT data show registered passenger cars in Montenegro rising from 176,000 in 2015 to 275,000 in 2025, an increase of 56 percent. Garages and car parks are filled with European used cars, and listings on Autodiler and Facebook promise showroom condition, no further spending and a car just imported.
The Customs Administration told the outlet that 82,308 passenger motor vehicles were imported over the last three years: 26,730 in 2023, 28,268 in 2024 and 27,310 last year. A large share are used vehicles that form the backbone of traffic, mostly cars built from the mid-2000s to the 2010s. New cars remain at the level of a statistical error, only 2.6 percent of vehicles on the roads.
As EU accession talks enter their final phase, the gap between drivers’ reality and Brussels rules is hard to avoid. In recent months, manipulative claims of an alleged diesel ban have fed owners’ fears and the question of whether membership would help them.
There is no EU rule that owners of older vehicles must replace them simply because they are old. The EU Regulation on vehicle circularity and end-of-life vehicles, adopted in July this year and applying from 1 September 2031, sets when a vehicle can no longer be treated as a used car and must be treated as an end-of-life vehicle. It is meant to stop the long practice by which western member states exported worn-out, crashed or environmentally unacceptable vehicles to markets in eastern and south-eastern Europe, including the Western Balkans.
Under the new standards, vehicles without valid roadworthiness, or whose repair is not economically worthwhile, will be treated in law as waste. The criteria also include severe fire or flood damage, dangerous leaks of fuel or other fluids, and certain cases of dismantling or body damage. Age alone is not a ground for automatic withdrawal. An older car is more likely to fail on technical condition, emissions or safety, and repairs are more likely to cost more than the car is worth, so it can more easily fall outside roadworthiness or become uneconomic to fix.
For several years the EU has applied common minimum rules for periodic inspections through Directive 2014/45/EU. The directive does not withdraw a vehicle because of its age. It sets minimum checks for vehicles in public traffic, including brakes, steering, visibility, lights, tyres, safety equipment and emissions. That does not mean every older car will leave the market.
Montenegro has already moved on imports. Since July 2024 it has banned the import of vehicles older than 15 years and of vehicles below the Euro 5 standard. Those limits apply to imports, not to cars already registered in Montenegro. European rules will not transform the existing fleet overnight, but they can gradually change which cars reach the market. For a used-car buyer, the cheapest end of the European market — old, technically troubled or near the end of its life — may become harder to export.
A Podgorica car-lot owner who spoke to the outlet does not expect the new rules to disrupt the market in a major way. He said he already mostly sources newer vehicles, and that cars in the EU turn over relatively quickly through an old-for-new system. He said people in EU countries drive a car for three or four years, pay the difference for a new one, and carry on that way. He added that older cars are still driven on the European market, while high costs and charges often push owners to replace them.
He also said used-car prices at auctions have risen compared with a few years ago, and that this shows up in the supply in Montenegro. He does not expect membership alone to change prices dramatically. Vehicles exported from the EU are already bought without VAT there, while VAT is paid in Montenegro, so entry itself should not cause a large price shock. He believes a further rise in the minimum Euro standard for used imports would matter more for buyers on smaller budgets, narrowing the choice of cheaper cars and cutting the number of vehicles they can afford. He said raising that minimum Euro standard for used-vehicle imports would very much affect the market and buyers with smaller budgets.
A car that is fully legal to register and drive in Montenegro may still be barred from some European cities. Countries and cities have introduced low-emission zones and restricted or zero-emission zones to cut air pollution. The EU has no single ban on driving old diesels in cities. Access rules are mostly set by states and local authorities, within a wider EU framework on the environment and air quality.
Hundreds of cities, including Berlin, Paris, Milan, Vienna and Ljubljana, have long applied strict environmental restrictions. In these zones, vehicles on older standards, for example Euro 4 and older diesels, are either banned or charged steep daily environmental fees. Emissions stickers such as Germany’s Umweltplakette and France’s Crit’Air mean a car without a valid DPF and with irregular combustion cannot receive a green or yellow sticker and is automatically barred from the wider city centre. A trip into the EU in a used car of doubtful condition can become a logistical and financial problem, with a risk of costly penalties on western roads.
Euro 7 is often presented as another rule that will clear older cars from the roads. It is not. It is the latest European standard for how much pollution a car may emit. For new types of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles, the rules apply from 29 November 2026, so a new model placed on the market after that date must be Euro 7 certified. From 29 November 2027, every new car sold in the EU, regardless of when it was approved, must be Euro 7, and no new car that is not Euro 7 will be allowed for sale.
For drivers in Montenegro, Euro 7 does not apply retroactively to cars already registered or produced before 29 November 2026. Owners of a diesel, petrol, hybrid or electric car have no duty to replace it or adapt it to Euro 7.