The assembly buries the ZFEs, « low -emission zones » – Liberation

Wednesday, May 28 will remain as a symbol date of great decline in ecological public policiesin progress for at least a year in the country. Entering the « simplification » bill of economic lifethe National Assembly acted in the evening the end of low -emission zones, the famous ZFEs which de facto restrict the circulation of certain vehicles in a handful of large agglomerations for Fighting air pollution.

Introduced into a committee at the initiative of LR and RN in a text originally aimed at facilitating the lives of entrepreneurs, the abolition of ZFEs was adopted by 98 votes against 51, with the help of elected modem and horizons, those of LFI and some macronists. Ecologists and socialists, on the other hand, largely voted against. But that was not enough to save the compromise amendment filed by the governmentwhich aimed to keep the ZFEs in Paris and Lyon at least and to establish a whole battery of communities’ hand exceptions.

This vote is a camouflet for the government and especially for the Minister of Ecological Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, who had been behind the scenes for weeks to convince her camp, centrist, to mobilize for the ZFE. Isolated in a government that is little interested in environmental issues, she had notably tried to assert that the eviction of old vehicles and the most emitting pollutants could save lives. « Air pollution is at the origin of nearly 40,000 premature deaths per year (…) and low -emission zones have contributed to lower these early deaths »had she thus defended in the hemicycle.

Initiated in 2019 to limit the emissions of fine particles, the ZFEs were an emblematic measure of the climate and resilience of the first five -year term of Emmanuel Macron, excluding from their perimeter certain very old vehicles, identified by the Crit’Air 3 or more vignettes according to the cities.

But the system, blurred and unfinished, and the weakness of aid for the purchase of cleaner vehicles were criticized on all sides. In the Assembly, many deputies have argued that they exclude categories of the population which cannot buy less polluting vehicles.

“Everyone is to improve air quality. (But) we think it cannot be done at the cost of social exclusion ”supported in the hemicycle Ian Boucard (LR). The ZFE « Are useless »Tancé Pierre Meurin (RN) when Sébastien Chenu, vice-president of the RN, welcomed a « STOP » to one « Symbol of social exclusion ». Laurent Wauquiez, boss of LR deputies, applauded a vote for « Liberating the French ».

The LFI group, praised a « victory » against « An unjust device ». “LFI proposed in 2022 a moratorium on the ZFE. It is urgent to plan our mobility by putting real means in alternatives in public transport ».

The former macronist minister of transport Clément Beaune, now a high commissioner, on the other hand, has deplored on X « Sad week of anti-ecological demagoguery »also citing an agricultural law aimed, among other things, to reintroduce certain neonicotinoids, and which continues its route to Parliament thanks to a tactical blow of the central block on Monday.

But the Battle of the ZFEs may not be over, which faces a risk of censorship in the Constitutional Council because it could be a legislative rider, distant on the bottom of the initial text. The vote on Wednesday evenings should be confirmed by that on the bill, while the debates on this text, fragmented since the beginning of April, must resume in mid-June, with 623 amendments to be studied.