The birth of Crit’Air environmental stickers, born on 1is July 2016, 15 years after the green dots, allows motorized vehicles to be tracked. Initially, it was a question of organizing alternating traffic, on days of heavy pollution according to the numbers from 1 to 5. Secondly, a more coercive method was announced to reduce automobile nuisance. Thus was born the ZFE-m for low mobility emission zone, voted in 2019 as part of the Mobility Orientation Law, which replaces the restricted traffic zone (ZCR).
Then there is an official and administrative implementation focusing on cities and metropolises with more than 150,000 inhabitants representing up to 12 million vehicles that would be excluded. This is where the problem lies. Both civil servants and politicians did not realize the economic impact this was going to have on tens of thousands of citizens, including craftsmen and transporters.
Greater Paris, Lyon, Aix-Marseille, Toulouse, Nice, Montpellier, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Rouen, Reims and Saint-Étienne are already concerned and followed by 2025, by 43 other agglomerations. In these areas, vehicles identified by the vignettes Crit’Air 5, 4 and 3 may be subject to traffic restrictions. These restrictions may apply during specific time slots. Local authorities are free to set more or less strict rules.
Lyon postpones the ban on Crit’Air 2 vehicles to 2028
It is precisely there that the system fails and the elected officials see the dispute rising. Let’s take the example of the Métropole de Lyon, which has decided to postpone the ban on Crit’Air 2 vehicles initially planned for 2026 to 2028. It was Bruno Bernard, the president of the Métropole de Lyon, who announced this postponement. He thus hopes to appease the strong tensions around this measure wanted by the environmentalist majority in the Metropolis, but absent from the law on the ZFE. Which means that everyone is tempted to do their little cooking without taking into account the realities on the ground. The elected official told the Tribune de Lyon newspaper: “By extending the timetable, the natural renewal of the vehicle fleet will be stronger and the improvement of public transport more effective. Many solutions and derogations were made in the consultation, but the system was too complex”.
In Lyon, the environmentalist and left-wing majority therefore wanted to go further and also ban Crit’Air 2 in the heart of the ZFE. This heart includes the municipalities of Lyon, Villeurbanne, as well as part of Caluire-et-Cuire, Vénissieux and Bron, inside the ring road. A second part of this ZFE, called extended ZFE, should include other municipalities. “Your ZFE corresponds to the most industrial zones of the metropolis, with a lot of workers. Where is the social justice? You could have compensated for it with accompanying measures up to the stake, but the account is not there ”was carried away Christophe Geourjon (UDI), elected centrist of opposition, in September 2022.
In fact, we can go around all the ZFE-m currently being installed, the anger is the same among the population and the companies. The timetable has been set no later than December 31, 2024, according to the Climate and Resilience Law… except for cities where pollution exceeds the limit thresholds. At that time, the ban on Crit’Air 5 is imposed in 2023, Crit’Air 4 in 2024 and Crit’Air 3 in 2025. But possibilities of derogations are provided for by decree. Local elected officials can therefore, under certain conditions, establish their own timetable, the perimeter of the zone, the levels of restrictions and the possibilities of derogations. The examples of Toulouse, Lyon and Strasbourg illustrate this lack of consistency. It is not easy to find your way around, especially since it is necessary to take into account the notion of exceeding European thresholds, which concerns the abolition imposed on vehicles with Crit’Air 3 stickers by 2025.
France does not respect the Paris Agreement
Faced with these imbroglios, the State and the ministers concerned are finding it difficult to take decisions that are too authoritarian at a time that is economically and socially very tense. However, we must expect changes in the implementation of ecological tools. Thursday, February 23, 2023, the Minister for Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, announced that France must be ready to face global warming of +4°C by the end of the century. This is the first time that the government has publicly considered that France is not respecting the Paris Agreement.
Read also: ZFE, the government is reviewing its copy
The minister insists “Everyone continues to work on how to mitigate global warming. But we don’t live under glass, other countries continue to have slopes that do not correspond to the Paris Agreement. All decisions that will have a long-term impact on heavy infrastructure, energy production for example, must be adapted to the different possible scenarios. And let’s be sure that the vehicles, like their use, are concerned. The government will not give up and that after chaotic implementations, the ZFE-m will participate in a system that will have to be effective.
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