These are three different acts, and across most of Europe three different bodies of law decide them. Wild camping is a question about land. Sleeping in a parked vehicle is usually a question about parking. An aire is a place where somebody with authority already answered the question for you, in advance, at that exact spot.
Most English-language writing runs the three together and produces advice that is confidently wrong. The practical cost is that a reader concludes a country is closed to them when it is not, or assumes they are fine when they are not.
1. Wild camping is a land question
Wild camping means pitching a tent on land you do not own, outside any designated site. That puts it under land access law, and land access law is where Europe varies most.
Scotland gives a statutory right. The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 creates access rights to be on land and to cross land for recreational purposes, and the Scottish Outdoor Access Code sets out what exercising that responsibly looks like for camping. See the Scotland page for what it does and does not cover.
Norway gives a similar right by a different route. The Outdoor Recreation Act, friluftsloven, says at section 9 that a place to rest, sunbathe or stay overnight may not be taken on innmark, roughly cultivated and domestic land, without the owner’s consent. On utmark, uncultivated land, it may. The Act then adds limits that are specific rather than decorative: a tent may not be set up so close to an inhabited house that it disturbs the occupants, and in any case no closer than 150 meters, and camping is not permitted for more than 2 døgn, two 24-hour periods, at a time without consent. The longer-stay limit relaxes in high mountains and in areas far from habitation. The Norwegian text is the authority and our summary is a summary.
France runs the other way and is a useful counterweight. Article R111-32 of the Code de l’urbanisme says camping is freely practiced outside the footprint of roads and public ways, with the agreement of whoever has the use of the land and subject to the owner’s objection. Article R111-33 then prohibits isolated camping outright in a list of protected settings: the sea shore and listed sites, classified sites, the perimeters of remarkable heritage sites and the surroundings of historic monuments, and within a 200 meter radius of water abstraction points for drinking water, each subject to specific derogations. A mayor can also prohibit it by decree where it would harm public health, safety or peace, among other grounds, and those prohibitions bite only once they have been posted at the town hall and signed at the usual access points.
Two things follow. Camping in France is not a free-for-all, and it is also not banned nationally. Both of the sentences you will read online are wrong.
Where a French national park permits an overnight stay, the word is usually bivouac, not camping, and the parks portal defines it tightly: one night, in a minimal setup, explicitly excluding anything motorized. That is covered on the France bivouac page.
2. Sleeping in a parked vehicle is usually parking
This is the distinction that changes the most trips, and it is the reason “wild camping is banned here” and “you cannot sleep in your van here” are different sentences that need separate answers.
Spain states it in an official national document. The Dirección General de Tráfico’s Instrucción PROT 2026/04 on autocaravanas, signed 11 March 2026, compiles how the regions draw the line, and the wording recurs almost verbatim across several of them. The Basque decree quoted in the instruction puts it this way:
Se considerará que no está acampada aquella autocaravana parada o estacionada en zonas autorizadas de las vías públicas urbanas o interurbanas, de acuerdo con las normas de tráfico y circulación, que no supere o amplíe su perímetro mediante la transformación o despliegue de elementos de aquella, se sustente sobre sus propias ruedas sin usar calzos, y no viertan sustancias ni residuos a la vía.
In English, and the Spanish original is the authority: a motorhome is not considered to be camping when it is stopped or parked in authorized areas of public urban or interurban roads under traffic rules, does not exceed or extend its perimeter by transforming or deploying any of its elements, rests on its own wheels without using chocks, and discharges no substances or waste onto the road. Catalonia’s tourism decree uses the same formula. Asturias adds that the only contact with the ground should be through the wheels, and that there should be no emissions or noise beyond what the engine produces.
That gives you a checklist rather than a vibe. Awning out, chairs and table out, leveling ramps under the wheels, waste emptied onto the ground: those are the acts these texts describe as camping. Sitting inside a legally parked vehicle with the blinds down is described as parking.
The same instruction is equally clear about the limits of that. Motorhomes may stop and park on the same terms as any other vehicle, but they must respect whatever municipal ordinances and signage apply, and the Spanish Supreme Court held in 2018 that a municipal traffic ordinance may both limit parking times and prohibit camping outside authorized zones. Being right about the national distinction does not help you if the local sign says no.
The principle holds in the Nordic countries too, in the opposite direction: the right to roam is a right for people on foot, and it does not carry your vehicle with it. Sweden’s Environmental Protection Agency puts it in one line in its English handbook, that the right of public access does not cover motor vehicles, and adds that driving and parking off-road is illegal and not covered by the right, naturally including campers and caravans. Norway keeps motor traffic in a separate act entirely: motorferdselloven section 3 prohibits motor traffic on utmark and watercourses unless the Act or a decision under it allows it.
Scotland is the sharpest statement of all, because it is in the statute. Section 9(f) of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 excludes from access rights “being on or crossing land in or with a motorised vehicle or vessel”, with a narrow exception for vehicles constructed or adapted for use by a person with a disability. A campervan parked overnight in Scotland is not exercising access rights. It is parked, and that is a matter for the landowner or the roads authority.
What we could not verify
Germany: not verified. Section 12 of the StVO defines parking, whoever leaves their vehicle or stops for longer than three minutes is parking, and it sets no maximum duration. That is the definition, and it is all we found in the official text. The widely repeated German rule that you may stay one night to restore fitness to drive, often quoted as a 10-hour allowance, does not appear in the StVO section we read, and we did not locate an official federal text stating it. We are not going to assert it. Check the local Gemeinde and read the sign.
France: not verified. Article R111-32 places camping outside the footprint of roads and public ways, which implies the road is governed by something else, but we did not find a national official text this session that defines the moment sleeping in a parked vehicle becomes camping. Treat the Spanish checklist as good practice in France, not as French law.
3. An aire is somebody saying yes in advance
An aire, a Stellplatz, a sosta, an area de autocaravanas: these are designated stopovers. A commune, a Gemeinde, a comune or a municipality decided that vehicles may stay there overnight, and said so before you arrived.
That is the whole reason this site maps them and does not map wild camping. A designation is a fact with a name attached to it. Spanish regional decrees recognize these areas as their own category, distinct both from campsites and from ordinary street parking, which is exactly the three-way split this page is about. What an aire is, and what it is not, is covered in what is an aire.
Note that a designated stopover does not usually make camping behavior legal there either. It makes parking overnight legal there. The awning stays in.
”Free camping” means two different things
The term is ambiguous across the Atlantic and it is worth saying so plainly.
To an American, free camping usually means dispersed camping on federal public land. The Bureau of Land Management defines dispersed camping as camping on public lands away from developed recreation facilities, generally limited to 14 days within any 28-day period, with stay limits varying by state and field office, and most areas requiring no permit or reservation.
To a European, free camping usually means a free aire or a stopover that is tolerated rather than granted. It is a parking space in a town, not a mile of forest road.
Neither group is using the phrase wrongly. They are describing different things with the same words, which is why advice travels badly in both directions. We cover what the European version actually looks like in free camping in Europe.
Ask the two questions separately
Before you plan a night, split the question in two.
- Am I pitching on land? Then you need the land access rules for that country, and in a protected area the rules for that specific area.
- Am I sleeping in a legally parked vehicle without deploying anything? Then you need the parking rules, which means national traffic law plus the local ordinance plus whatever the sign says.
We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. Every claim above is linked to the authority that made it, and the posted sign and the local authority’s current guidance beat this page every time. Where a source is in French, Spanish, Norwegian or German, the original text is the authority and our English is a summary of it.
Sources
- Instruccion PROT 2026/04 Autocaravanas, Direccion General de Trafico (Spain)
- Trafico actualiza la Instruccion de autocaravanas, DGT press release, 16 March 2026
- Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, section 9, conduct excluded from access rights
- Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, section 1, access rights
- Friluftsloven, Norwegian Outdoor Recreation Act, Lovdata
- Motorferdselloven, Norwegian Act on motor traffic on uncultivated land, Lovdata
- The Right of Public Access, Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, English handbook 2025
- Article R111-32, Code de l'urbanisme (France), Legifrance
- Article R111-33, Code de l'urbanisme (France), Legifrance
- Le bivouac, Portail des parcs nationaux de France
- Paragraph 12 StVO, Halten und Parken, Gesetze im Internet (Germany)
- Camping on Public Lands, Bureau of Land Management (United States)
Where the original is not in English, the summary above is ours and the linked text is the authority.