Bucharest mayor Gabriela Firea who is running for a second term as mayor this summer says she will scrap an unpopular proposal to ban heavily polluting cars from the city center and a proposed tax on other cars designed to reduce pollution and heavy traffic in the Romanian capital.
Firea says she has decided to withdraw the “Oxygen tax” proposal after negative feedback on Facebook.
Under the measure, the worst offenders, known as Euro 1 and Euro 2 cars, would have been barred from downtown regardless of where they are registered starting from 2022. Less polluting cars would have had to pay a road tax.
The tax was introduced on January 1, 2020, and the first sanctions for motorists who failed to comply with the new regulations would have been enforced in March.
The Bucharest City Hall did a survey on Facebook asking the city’s residents if they agreed with the new tax. There were about 60,000 comments on the survey, of which 90% were against the tax, Firea said on Tuesday. She said her decision to drop the tax would be reviewed by the General Council in March.
“I will cancel the project, but that doesn’t mean we will give up,” she said Tuesday.
“I won’t give up the Oxygen project because it includes several projects, planting trees, the acquisition of less polluting cars, bicycle lanes, the verification of polluting sites, streets, passage bridges,” Firea was quoted as saying.
She said some 1,600 Bucharest motorists had already paid for the road tax or vignette, at a cost of 76,000 euros. They will be reimbursed, she said.
The mayor said that the results of the survey were very clear, with Bucharest residents strongly opposed to the tax and restrictions.
“Do we want more cars in traffic? It seems so. Do we want to have more polluting cars in traffic? It seems so. This popular consultation revealed a very clear answer: the citizens reject the idea of ecological restrictions and a tax.
“At this moment, we are not willing to agree with a measure that has been successful throughout Europe,” Firea said.
In a bid to offset pollution, Firea said the City Hall would hand out 20,000 vouchers worth 9,000 lei to those who want to swap their polluting cars with new ones. Last year the municipality distributed 5,000 vouchers.
She said there were more than 370,000 cars with Euro 3 engines or even higher in Bucharest.
The number after ‘Euro’ refers to European emission standards which define the acceptable limits for exhaust emissions of cars sold in the European Union. The lower the number, the older and more polluting the car.
