Points in Flensburg are talked about as a single running total that eventually costs you your licence. The total is real — eight points and the licence goes — but the part that decides most outcomes is that every point expires on its own timetable, and that you can remove one voluntarily while you are still low enough for it to matter.
1. What happens at each stage
Offences carry one, two or three points depending on severity — one for ordinary Ordnungswidrigkeiten affecting road safety, more for serious ones and for anything criminal. The system escalates in defined steps rather than all at once:
- 1 to 3 — nothing happens beyond the entry.
- 4 or 5 — a written warning (Ermahnung).
- 6 or 7 — a formal caution (Verwarnung).
- 8 or more — the licence is withdrawn (Entziehung der Fahrerlaubnis).
Eight is not a ban that expires. It is withdrawal, followed by a blocking period and a fresh application, commonly with a medical-psychological assessment (MPU) in the way. The distance between seven and eight is much larger than the distance between six and seven, and that is the point of the ladder.
2. Points expire one at a time
This surprises people who remember the older system. Each entry expires on its own schedule, normally counted from the day the decision became final:
- one-point entries — two and a half years
- two-point entries — five years
- three-point entries — ten years
Entries do not expire as a block, and a new offence does not extend the life of an older one. So a total that looks alarming today can fall on its own within months, and knowing which entry expires next tells you where you will stand.
Expired does not mean deleted. An expired entry stays on the register for at least one more year (§ 29(6) StVG). And a warning, caution or withdrawal depends on your total on the day of the offence that triggers it. Points that had expired by then do not count; points that expire later still do (§ 4(5) StVG). So an old entry running out while a new notice is pending does not lower that total.
A few entries start their clock later: a decision refusing or withdrawing a licence for unfitness, a court order barring someone without a licence from getting one, and a surrender of the licence. For these, the clock runs from the issue of a new licence, and at the latest from five years after the decision became final or the surrender reached the authority (§ 29(5) StVG). This delays only the entry for that decision, not your other entries.
Whether points still count is a separate question from how long an entry is kept. When a licence is issued, including a new one after a withdrawal, a court bar or a surrender, points from decisions that became final before then no longer count and are deleted. This does not apply to a renewal, an added licence class, a licence issued after a time-limited one lapsed, or a licence issued on simplified terms to the holder of a foreign or service licence. Nor does it apply after a probationary licence was withdrawn because an ordered seminar (Aufbauseminar) was not completed in time (§ 4(3) StVG, § 2a(3) StVG).
3. Removing a point on purpose
While you are at one to five points, you can take a driver aptitude seminar (Fahreignungsseminar) and have one point removed. You must hand the certificate to the licensing authority within two weeks of finishing, and your total on the day the certificate is issued is what counts. It removes a point only once in five years (§ 4(7) StVG).
The timing is the whole trick. At six or more it no longer reduces anything, so the seminar is worth taking before you need it, not once the letters start arriving. People routinely discover it at seven, by which point it has already stopped working.
4. Finding out what you actually have
The register (Fahreignungsregister) is held by the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt in Flensburg, and you are entitled to ask what is recorded about you free of charge. Employers cannot pull it themselves.
Worth doing before you assume the worst, and before deciding whether to contest a new notice: the decision looks different when you know you are at three rather than six, and which entries had already expired on the day of the new offence.
5. Points and a foreign licence
Points attach to you, not to the plastic. Driving on a foreign licence in Germany does not put you outside the system — offences committed here are recorded here, and at eight points the right to drive in Germany is withdrawn even where the licence itself was issued elsewhere and stays physically valid at home.
If you hold a non-EU licence, this runs alongside a separate and shorter clock: see our guide to driving licences in Germany, where the six-month conversion rule turns driving into a criminal offence rather than a points problem.
The short version
Eight points means withdrawal, not a ban you sit out. Entries expire individually after two and a half, five or ten years, so find out which of yours is closest to going. Take the seminar while you are still at five or below, because at six it removes nothing. And ask Flensburg what is actually recorded before deciding anything — it is free, and it is usually different from what people assume.