The French government has announced a series of measures against pollution including incentives for purchasing electric vehicles.
Environment Minister Ségolène Royal said Saturday professionals will get a bonus of up to 10,000 euros if they scrap their old diesel light commercial vehicles or taxis for electric ones, starting next month. The measure has been in effect for private buyers since last year.
A bonus of 1,000 euros will also be granted for the purchase of an electric scooter from January 1, she said.
Several French cities have been reeling under a surge in pollution in recent days. Paris faced its worse winter pollution in a decade over the past week. As a result, since Tuesday, half of all private cars were ordered off the roads in the Paris region, alternating between a ban on registration plates ending in odd or even numbers.
However, these restrictions have been eased for Saturday and Sunday following ‘favourable predictions’ by the organisation AirParif, which monitors air quality in the Paris region.
The proposed measures included forcing motorists to display colour-coded air-quality certificates on vehicles so that the dirtiest of them could be banned during the next alert. This display sticker is set to become mandatory from January 16.
