From January 1, 2025, certain ZFEs will prohibit the circulation of Crit’Air 3 vehicles in large metropolises.
The Low Emission Zones (ZFE) will continue to crack down next year. Four of them will prohibit the circulation of cars with a Crit’Air 3 sticker within their perimeters, i.e. diesel vehicles registered before 2011 and gasoline vehicles from 2006 or less They represent more than 20% of the active French automobile fleet.
Paris, Lyon, Montpellier and Grenoble will crack down on the Crit’Air 3
The four cities which will ban the circulation of Crit’Air 3 vehicles from the start of next year are therefore the capital and the metropolitan areas of Lyon, Montpellier and Grenoble. If the first two cities are obliged to prohibit the circulation of “polluting” Crit’Air 3 vehicles, the town halls of Grenoble and Montpellier have freely chosen to apply this decision.
Initially, the cities of Marseille, Rouen and Strasbourg were also affected by the tightening of their ZFEs. They would then have been obliged to ban the circulation of the Crit’Air 3 from January 1, 2025. However, this charge was lifted because the air quality improved during the year. The government therefore allowed these metropolises to choose last March.
Also note that the ZFEs of urban areas do not, in general, cover the entire city in question. Although there are still exceptions. That of Paris, for example, does not only concern the capital, but also all the towns in the inner suburbs. Each zone is listed by the town halls on a dedicated website, all listed and grouped together on another site created by the State.
More than thirty new EPZs arriving in 2025
If therefore, not all ZFEs will ban the circulation of Crit’Air 3 cars (each has room for maneuver), they will nevertheless proliferate on January 1st. Currently numbering twelve, they will increase, on this date, to forty-two.
This is due to the Climate and Resilience law of 2021, which provides for the systematic establishment of an ZFE in all urban areas with more than 150,000 inhabitants, where the air quality value recommended by the World Organization of Health are outdated.
Here is the list of all the cities which will have an effective ZFE at the beginning of next year (the towns which will ban the Crit’Air 3 in 2025 are in bold):
Lille
Dunkirk
Béthune
Rouen (already in place)
Le Havre
Caen
Rennes
Brest
Le Mans
Nantes
Angers
Tours
Orléans
Limoges
Bordeaux
Saint-Etienne (already in place)
Toulouse (already in place)
Bayonne
Pau
Perpignan
Montpellier (already in place)
Nimes
Avignon
Aix-Marseille (already in place)
Toulon
Nice (already in place)
Grenoble (already in place)
Chambery
Annecy
Annemasse
Lyon (already in place)
Dijon
Clermont-Ferrand (already in place)
Mulhouse
Nancy
Strasbourg (already in place)
Metz
Reims (already in place)
Paris and the Greater Paris Metropolis (already in place)
Amiens
Valenciennes
Douai-Lens
Belgium
