Alex Trelinski
DRIVERS with vehicles that don’t qualify to enter Valencia’s upcoming Low Emission Zone(ZBE) will not be fined for entering the area in 2025.
Valencia mayor, Maria Jose Catala, told Cope Radio that the ZBE will be introduced gradually and progressively.
Catala said: “People have to plan to change their vehicle or do we think everybody will suddenly change cars from one day to the next?”
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She added that the first year of Valencia’s ZBE will be about getting people to get used to it so ‘that the restrictions are known and families can plan budgets accordingly’.
The measure has to be formally approved by a plenary meeting of the City Council before a June 29 deadline so as not to potentially lose European Union funding.
The Partido Popular run Valencia in coalition with Vox with its spokesperson, Juanma Badenas, saying on Thursday that the two parties were working on the ordinance for the ZBE and stating ‘the effects will be minimal’.
“The position of Vox is known to everyone, which is against these measures, but there is a link with the getting European funds that means the council has to do it,” Badenas commented.
The exact final details have yet to be announced but restrictions will apply only to certain vehicles and only on certain dates or occasions- similar to Barcelona and Madrid.
Valencia has stated several times that it will comply with the need to follow state regulations, but as a council source told the Las Provincias newspaper, ‘never going to the maximum as the left wants, but with sensitivity’.
