It’s a reprieve, but vehicles with a diesel engine and put into circulation before 2011 will be able to continue to circulate for a year in Greater Paris. Forced to display the Crit’Air 3 sticker on the windshield, which reflects the level of polluting emissions, they should normally have stayed in the garage.

This also applies to gasoline-powered vehicles put into circulation before 2006 and whose canonical age testifies to the standard of living of the owners. We can indeed bet that it is not by taste that they drive in these old cars, but quite simply by lack of means of these modest households who have, most often, no other solution to move .

It is in particular on this basis that the Metropolis of Greater Paris (MGP) based itself to justify this postponement of application. In a deliberation reported by Le Parisien, the MGP explains its decision by the non-responses of the State to two questions. The first was that the MGP be recognized “as a territory of experimentation for the implementation of a zero-rate loan in order to reduce the balance to be paid by the most modest households”.

This decision would give them the right to be helped up to 6,000 euros for the purchase of a cleaner vehicle. A growing need since the number of files filed in this direction increased to the MGP from 293 to 1,470 between 2020 and 2021, according to Le Parisien.

The other point hindering the implementation of the ban on access to this low-emission zone (ZFE) in the Ile-de-France region is the availability of radars capable of detecting offences. As they are not operational, they cannot therefore automatically sanction offenders, who, it is recalled, are the least fortunate. It is therefore the municipal police who would be reduced to these thankless tasks.

This unfulfilled application schedule is not a surprise since, already last February, the MGP had announced that at least the ban would apply from January 1, 2023. It has now been postponed to July 1 of the next year, but that does not change the problem of consumers who cannot rely on an efficient transport network to get around without spending hours there.

They are therefore justified in replacing their old thermal car that is out of breath with others that are a little less so with a budget of only a few thousand euros. The legislator’s proposal is completely above ground since it encourages the purchase of a clean car, if possible electric, which will be eligible for aid of 6,000 euros. But if you still have to pay 20,000 euros or more for the “rest to be paid”, it is to be feared that very few Ile-de-France residents, before the other metropolises under ZFE, will be able to do so.