Paris gives 6-month delay for new crackdown on polluting cars

Authorities have gradually been removing the oldest and most-polluting vehicles from Paris streets over the past several years with the introduction of mandatory emission ranking stickers, called Crit'air levels.

The move was spearheaded by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who is playing up her green credentials as the Socialist Party candidate to challenge Emmanuel Macron in the looming presidential election.

She has pledged to ban diesel vehicles outright in the city by the opening of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, and is planning a near-total traffic ban in the heart of the capital, one of the densest urban landscapes in Europe.

On July 1, the ban on older cars in the greater Paris region was to be extended to Crit'air Class 3 vehicles, which include all gasoline-engine cars made before January 2006 -- and all diesel-engine cars from before 2011.

That would have affected more than 1.2 million vehicles, as a two-page spread in the popular Parisien tabloid reminded readers on Tuesday.

However "the next stage for the Low-Emission Zone... has been postponed to at least 2023," the Paris Metropolitan Authority (MGP) said late Tuesday.

It attributed the delay to a need for additional financial aid for low-income households to buy more recent cars, and to the rollout of standardised radars for automated checks.

Older cars, light trucks and motorcycles will be prohibited from 8:00am to 8:00pm on weekdays within Paris and its nearest suburbs, a zone with a population of some 7.2 million people.

The MGP says on its website that similar schemes "already adopted in 231 European cities or regions... have proved particularly effective in cutting traffic emissions."

But critics say the crackdown penalises in particular suburban residents and workers who do not have easy access to efficient public transportation, forcing them to rely more on their cars.