Beginning next year, the Brussels Region will ban all diesel cars with the Euro 4 standard.
These are typically cars from 11 to 16 years old, which Bruzz reports make up about 10 percent of the cars in Belgium, with 38,000 cars in Brussels alone.
The statistics come from the Federation of Automobile Industries (Fébiac), which says that 604,438 cars of the 5,853,568 in the country won’t be allowed to enter the low emission zone (LEZ) in the Belgian capital in 2022.
Mobility organisation Touring has criticised the new measure as environmentally unfriendly.
“The average lifespan of a car is 17 years. By forcing people to replace their car after 11 years, you almost halve the cycle,” said spokesman Lorenzo Stefani.
Stefani also pointed out that the coronavirus crisis has created additional difficulties when it comes to purchasing new vehicles, in particular due to continuing shortages of certain materials that have forced plants to cease production entirely on multiple occasions during the pandemic.
“Exceptional circumstances call for exceptional measures,” he said “We ask the Brussels authorities to think about solutions for the 600,000 vehicles that will no longer be allowed to drive in Brussels in two and a half months' time.”
The new measure would also affect 350,705 cars from Flanders and 215,664 from Wallonia, according to La Capitale.
