the Low Emission Zone postponed again, this time to early 2025

A postponement, again. The ban on the circulation of 380,000 polluting vehicles in the Greater Paris metropolis (MGP) will not take place before the start of 2025. The metropolis, which had already postponed this third phase of the ban from July 2022 to July 2023, notes that it is “materially impossible” to introduce it this summer, in “the absence of tangible responses from the State” on the zero rate loan guarantee and the “automated sanction control”. “Until the government moves forward, we will not be able to set up our EPZ,” hammered the president LR, Patrick Ollier, during the metropolitan council, Thursday, July 13. “A ZFE without sanctions will not work”added the chosen one.

Nearly 40,000 deaths related to fine particles each year

The postponement to early 2025 was adopted by 81% of elected officials, in an assembly dominated by the right. The left-wing elected officials preferred a shorter period, to January 1, 2024. The elected socialist Daniel Guiraud thus deplored that the metropolis “accompanies the State’s climate inaction by adjusting [son] calendar each time the State shows procrastination”.

The Greater Paris ZFE, which is the largest in France with 7.2 million inhabitants, has already banned the circulation of unclassified vehicles bearing the Crit’air 5 sticker in July 2019, then Crit’air 4 in June 2021. The ban on the circulation of Crit’Air 3 vignettes concerns petrol vehicles registered before January 1, 2006 and diesel engines registered before January 1, 2011. It has already been postponed for the first time from July 2022 to July 2023 . Every year, 40,000 deaths are attributable to fine particle pollution, according to a report by Public Health France.