Salzburg has begun enforcing a summer ban on visitors driving into its historic centre, with day trippers facing fines of up to €80 for entering the Austrian city's old town during July and August. This restriction, aimed at reducing vehicle entries by 1,000 a day, highlights a tiered system of movement, where some are criminalised for crossing lines others navigate freely.
Mayor Bernhard Auinger announced the measure just 1 month ago, in May, citing “chaotic traffic situations” from last year. He stated, “We don’t want chaotic traffic situations like we saw last year,” framing the movement of certain visitors as a problem to be contained. This echoes the manufactured moral panics used to justify broader border enforcement.
Auinger explicitly targeted “day trippers who travel by car from farther afield,” while insisting that “residents of the central Salzburg area and business-related traffic are not affected by this.” This distinction creates a clear hierarchy, prioritizing local economic interests and residents over the freedom of movement for others. He even claimed tourists would benefit, stating, “It’s certainly much better than spending hours stuck in traffic.”
Exclusion by Design
Patrolling police officers are imposing fines on drivers with numberplates from outside the Salzburg region entering the old town around the Staatsbrücke. Yet, the policy is riddled with exemptions that reveal its discriminatory core. Commuters, delivery vehicles, taxis, and rental cars are all granted passage. Disabled visitors and hotel guests with reservation confirmations in the restricted zone also face no barriers.
Crucially, German motorists from the neighbouring Bavarian areas of Berchtesgaden and Bad Reichenhall are also exempted. This specific national and regional carve-out exposes a differential treatment based on origin, a hallmark of Europe's broader border regime. The city council approved this policy 1 month ago, in May.
Auinger's rhetoric, telling Salzburg24 that the city “basically allowed tourists to drive into our sitting room,” dehumanizes those whose movement is now restricted. It paints them as an invading force, a narrative frequently deployed against migrants and asylum seekers across the continent.
The Logic of Restricted Movement
Heidi Strobl of the local tourism board noted that Salzburg’s policy draws inspiration from "zona a traffico limitato" (limited traffic zones) in Italian cities like Rome, Florence, and Pisa, as well as a ban in Dubrovnik, Croatia. These examples illustrate a growing trend across Europe: the creation of internal zones of exclusion, where access is granted or denied based on status, origin, or economic utility.
Salzburg, a Unesco world heritage site, has just over 158,000 residents but records more than 3 million overnight stays each year. The city's economic reliance on tourism is undeniable, with last year's celebrations of the 60th anniversary of The Sound of Music spurring an extra tourist boom 1 year ago. The ban, therefore, isn't about stopping all movement, but about curating whose movement is acceptable and profitable, and whose is deemed a burden.
This selective control of movement, privileging certain nationalities and economic classes while penalizing others, mirrors the logic of Fortress Europe. It's a micro-example of how Europe's political order increasingly relies on restricting movement and creating internal borders, even for those within its own economic sphere, setting a dangerous precedent for the criminalisation of movement itself.