Paris postpones its ban on polluting cars to 2023

Drivers of older cars in Paris and its suburbs will have a bit more breathing room before the vehicles are largely banned as part of anti-pollution efforts. The plan – due to be rolled out this summer – has been pushed back to at least 2023..

Traffic drives past an electronic road sign which reads "Pollution, reduce speed", on the Paris ring road. © Reuters/Charles Platiau

Authorities have gradually been removing the oldest and most-polluting vehicles from Paris streets over recent years with the introduction of mandatory emission ranking stickers, called Crit'air levels.

The move was spearheaded by Paris Mayor and presidential candidate Anne Hidalgo, who has pledged to ban diesel vehicles outright in the city by the opening of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. 

She is planning a near-total traffic ban in the heart of the capital, one of the densest urban landscapes in Europe.

• Diesel fumes to disappear from Paris as worst-polluting cars forced off roads

On 1 July, the ban on older cars in the greater Paris area – 'Grand Paris' – was to be extended to Crit'air Class 3 vehicles, which include all gasoline/petrol-engine cars made before January 2006, and all diesel-engine cars from before 2011. That would have affected more than 1.2 million vehicles.

Low-Emission Zone

However "the next stage for the Low-Emission Zone [...] has been postponed to at least 2023," the Paris Metropolitan Authority (MGP) said late Tuesday.

Zone à Faibles Emissions (#ZFE) métropolitaine:
précisions sur le calendrier 👉 https://t.co/Ixj9E4lnK9 pic.twitter.com/oOv2XXwFU9

— Métropole du Grand Paris (@GrandParisMGP) February 1, 2022

It attributed the delay to a need for additional financial aid for low-income households to buy more recent cars, and to the rollout of standardised radars for automated checks.

Older cars, light trucks and motorcycles will be prohibited from 8:00am to 8:00pm on weekdays within Paris and its nearest suburbs, a zone with a population of some 7.2 million people.

The MGP says on its website that similar schemes "already adopted in 231 European cities or regions [...] have proved particularly effective in cutting traffic emissions".

But critics say the crackdown penalises in particular suburban residents and workers who do not have easy access to efficient public transportation, forcing them to rely more on their cars.

(-AFP)