Parliament adopts the reuse of cars destined for scrapping

Parliament has definitively adopted an environmental bill allowing the recovery of low-polluting cars, intended for scrapping as part of the conversion bonus, to rent them at a lower cost to the most precarious.

A unanimous vote by the National Assembly, on the night of Wednesday March 27 to Thursday March 28, resulted in final adoption of the senatorial text, the deputies not having modified the version issued by the Upper House.

“The economic model of solidarity garages has been largely weakened by the implementation of the conversion bonus”argued the rapporteur of the text, the ecologist Marie Pochon, highlighting the sending “each year thousands of vehicles are scrapped, sometimes low-polluting, sometimes without much mileage and usable”.

These vehicles “constituted the bulk of donations to solidarity garages which guaranteed mobility to those who otherwise give it up”, she added. The possibility of reusing them, via these garages, particularly in rural and isolated areas, is a “measure of general interest”she pleaded.

Patrice Vergriete, Minister for Transport, supported the text, judging that it was necessary “ensure the social support which is essential to success” of the ecological transition, taking into account “the particular needs and constraints of the most modest French people”.

A measure that should benefit solidarity garages

The text provides that local authorities, through the mobility organizing authorities (AOM), can recover certain vehicles eligible for the conversion bonus, for the benefit of people “socially disadvantaged”through low-cost vehicle rental systems.

This concerns gasoline cars classified “Crit’Air 3” or better classified, which can be reused through “recognized associations of public utility or general interest” like solidarity garages.

The conversion bonus allows individuals, subject to income conditions, to obtain assistance to acquire a low-polluting vehicle in exchange for scrapping an old vehicle. It had the effect of restricting the fleet of vehicles available in solidarity garages.

Rare dissonant voice in the Hemicycle, Modem deputy Bruno Millienne criticized environmentalists for wanting “put polluting vehicles back on the road that you didn’t want to see two years ago”.

He proposed, without success, that the recovered vehicles be subject to a “mandatory retrofit”that is to say a modification allowing them to circulate with less polluting fuels.