Police officers and gendarmes fear for their cars

A Peugeot 3008 of the national gendarmerie, second generation model.

If you frequently come across police or gendarmerie cars in poor condition, it may be because of a drop in budgets allocated to renewing the fleets of vehicles used by law enforcement as part of their duties. missions.

As detailed by Auto Infos journalists, the low rate of renewal of the fleets of these vehicles worries senior law enforcement officials and certain parliamentarians. Major General of the National Gendarmerie André Petillot recalls, for example, that the gendarmes only ordered 325 new vehicles in 2023 and 185 in 2024compared to 3,700 in 2021 and 3,300 in 2022 (including the famous Peugeot 3008 and 5008 of the second generation which we now often encounter on French roads).

The penalty is a big problem for gendarmes and police officers

These concerns, shared by national police officials, also concern the significantly increasing price of current new cars compared to those of vehicles from the beginning of the decade. Above all, the very large amounts of the French ecological penalty, from which the gendarmes do not deviate when they purchase new vehicles, considerably limit their room for maneuver. General André Petillot gives the example of 4x4s purchased for his soldiers in Guyana where, because of the penalty, the unit price reaches €100,000. Ironically, the French ecological penalty is costly to the French administration when it should have penalized buyers of large luxury cars!

The 2025 finance bill plans to renew 1,850 vehicles just for the national gendarmerie, but this figure would not be enough for André Petillot because of the too high price of the necessary cars.