Two out of every three Spanish cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants (68%, specifically) do not have Low Emission Zones (ZBE) implemented – which entails restrictions on access, circulation and parking of motor vehicles to combat pollution -, when all of them were obliged to establish them already in 2023.
The Climate Change and Energy Transition Law of 2021 obliges municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants and islands to implement low-emission zones before 2023, which affects 155 localities.
However, Only 49 of these cities have them implemented (32%), according to data from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge to which Servimedia had access.
Fifteen of them are in Catalonia (Badalona, Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Cornellà del Llobregat, El Prat de Llobregat, Esplugues de Llobregat, Gavà, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Lleida, Mollet del Vallès, Sant Adrià de Besòs, Sant Cugat del Vallès, Sant Joan Despí, Terrassa and Viladecans).
Andalusia has nine others (Almería, Córdoba, Estepona, Fuengirola, La Línea de la Concepción, Linares, Málaga, Seville and Torremolinos) and the Community of Madrid, with eight (Alcobendas, Boadilla del Monte, Fuenlabrada, Las Rozas de Madrid, Madrid, Rivas-Vaciamadrid, Torrejón de Ardoz and Tres Cantos).
The rest are distributed between Castilla y León (Ávila, Ponferrada, Segovia and Valladolid), Valencian Community (Benidorm and Elche), Galicia (A Coruña and Pontevedra), Basque Country (Bilbao and San Sebastián), Murcia (Cartagena and Molina de Segura ), Aragón (Zaragoza), Asturias (Siero), Balearic Islands (Palma), Castilla-La Mancha (Guadalajara) and Navarra (Pamplona).
Instead, Eight municipalities have not yet started the procedures (Arganda del Rey, Arona, El Puerto de Santa María, Ferrol, Orihuela, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Telde and Valdemoro), which represent 5% of the obligated municipalities, in addition to all the Balearic and Canary Islands.
Another 98 localities (63% of the total of more than 50,000 residents) are in the approval phase.
Aids
The Climate Change and Energy Transition Law does not include any sanctioning regime for non-compliant cities and islands, but from the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, with its head, Óscar Puente, They have warned on several occasions that these municipalities could lose aid for public transport.
Even Transport sent a letter in September 2023 warning those cities that they would stop receiving European funds linked to the promotion of public transport.
Sources from the department led by Puente indicated to Servimedia that currently there is no decision made in this regard, although They pointed out that some measure of this type could be included in the Sustainable Mobility Law, currently being processed in the Congress of Deputies.
“No excuses”
Last week, the third vice president of the Government and minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Sara Aagesen called “accelerate” and “without excuses” the implementation of ZBEs in cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants and the island territories.
“It is important to accelerate all the measures that have to do with low emission zones. I believe that it is a responsibility that we must undertake and that must be undertaken by the different responsible administrations. From here, a call for urgent action by the zones low emissions,” he noted.
Furthermore, Aagesen stressed that there is a guide with “very clear guidelines” on how to implement these low-emission zones. “Excuses are no longer valid. Let’s work for it, let’s work for the health of our people, especially the most vulnerable,” he added.
Aagesen commented that air quality is not only related to the environment, but also to people’s health. “We talk about the health of each and every one of us who live in these urban environments, especially the health of those who are most vulnerable to this air pollution,” he added.
Possible sanctions
After making these statements at a public event at the headquarters of his department, Aagesen received the leaders of the five main environmental organizations in Spain (Friends of the Earth, Ecologists in Action, Greenpeace, SEO/BirdLife and WWF), which They delivered a document with 75 proposals for the coming months, including studying possible sanctions for cities that are required to have low-emission zones and still lack them.
The document received by Aagesen includes 14 priority topics, organized in three blocks and with a total of 75 specific proposals to advance the ecological transition in an “effective and fair” manner.
The priorities focus on three axes: conserve nature to protect life; fight, protect and adapt to the climate emergency, and safeguard the territory and ensure a healthy life and a circular economy.
Regarding the latter, there is a theme dedicated to “guaranteeing the right to clean air”, within which a proposal is to “monitor the effective implementation of Low Emission Zones (ZBE) in cities, study the development of sanctions for their lack of application and develop short-term action plans against episodes of poor air quality” .
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