Vehicles classified Crit'Air 3, banned within the Low Emission Zone from 2025, will finally be able to circulate freely in the ZFE 139 days per year.
The most polluting vehicles, soon to be banned from driving in the Low Emission Zone (ZFE) of Greater Paris, will be able to deviate from the restrictions 24 days a year and will be exempt from inspections for a year, the metropolis announced on Monday, which regretted the disengagement of the State from this system. From January 1, 2025, motorists holding a Crit'Air 3 vehicle (air quality certificate), i.e. diesel vehicles registered before 2011 and gasoline cars before 2006 , will be able to benefit from a “24 hour pass” for 24 days to move freely in the ZFE, in addition to weekends, i.e. 139 days in total. More than 420,000 vehicles are affected by these new restrictions, already applied to Crit'Air 4 and 5 stickers.
The ZFE includes a large part of Greater Paris: 77 municipalities out of the 131 in the metropolis, within the perimeter formed by the A86 motorway, Monday to Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Twenty-two socio-professional categories will also be able to circulate freely there, such as vehicles supplying the markets, movers, cinema crews or workers working odd hours. General interest association vehicles, as well as priority vehicles (fire brigade, police, SAMU, etc.), are not affected either. All Crit'Air 3 vehicles will also be exempt from inspection for one year, for a period “pedagogical phase” where mayors will have to distribute a booklet to motorists, announced Patrick Ollier, the president of the Métropole du Grand Paris (MGP).
In front of the elected officials gathered at the Metropolitan Council, he said to himself “extremely disappointed” that the automated controls, which the State is responsible for putting in place, will only take place in 2026. In the absence of controls, the ZFE risks only being “virtual”regretted to AFP Sylvain Raifaud, co-president of the ecological, social and citizen group of the MGP. “It’s magical thinking.”commented Emmanuel Grégoire, president of the socialist, environmentalist and republican group in the metropolis.
Paris and Lyon above pollution thresholds
The metropolitan councilors also castigated the government's recent decision to eliminate the conversion aid that the metropolis had hitherto supplemented, a measure considered “antisocial” by environmental advisor David Belliard. This aid will fall from “22,000 euros for the purchase of a new vehicle at 10,000 euros”lamented Patrick Ollier, asking the government to “review your roadmap”. “More than 90% of the Metropolis’ aid benefited the poorest households”he argued at the beginning of December, warning of the risk of “weaken social acceptability” from ZFE. “It’s a level of disengagement on the part of the state that is shocking. He shifts the responsibility for ZFEs onto communities even though he has been convicted twice (in 2021, editor's note) for his inaction on the issue of air quality.protested Sylvain Raifaud.
Twelve large French cities have already set up an ZFE. Only the Paris and Lyon metropolitan areas are obliged to limit the circulation of Crit'Air 3 vehicles from January 1 because they exceed the pollution thresholds for two types of pollutants (fine particles and nitrogen dioxide). In Lyon, where a maximum of 52 days of exemption will be granted per year for Crit'Air cars, workers working staggered hours will be exempt from the traffic ban for Crit'Air 3 vehicles in the ZFE, the environmentalist president of the ZFE said on Monday. Greater Lyon, Bruno Bernard, during a metropolitan council. The ZFE system, governed by the 2019 climate and resilience law, aims to reduce air pollution and its effects on health. Some “4,970 premature deaths per year in the Greater Paris Metropolis could be avoided if WHO recommendations were respected”according to the public consultation launched by the MGP.
