It’s a fact: Brussels LEZ postponed to 1 January 2027

The Brussels parliament has postponed for two years the tightening of the Low-Emission Zone (LEZ) on January 1st, 2025. The Liberals, PS, Les Engagés, Team Fouad Ahidar, and Vlaams Belang voted in favor; the Greens and DéFi against, while Vooruit, N-VA, and CD&V abstained.

Urban movement BRAL calculated that postponing the ban on the most polluting cars’ access to the Brussels Region will not achieve a 13.5 reduction in NO2.

Around 44,000 vehicles registered in Brussels involved

The postponement of the next phase in the LEZ means that vehicles meeting the Euro 5 standard for diesel and Euro 2 standard for gasoline will not be banned in the Brussels Region until January 1st, 2027, instead of 2025.

It would involve 35,284 cars and 8,512 light commercial vehicles registered in the Brussels Region, 634,899 passenger cars, and 154,934 light commercial vehicles for all of Belgium. No figures are known about the number of vehicles registered abroad.

Most Flemish parties are not happy

“This dossier has been instrumentalized for the municipal elections,” Groen floor leader Stijn Bex said, referring to the way the future French-speaking coalition partners MR, Les Engagés, and PS had unilaterally filed an ordinance proposal to postpone the LEZ measure last month.

Bex reiterated that Groen had wanted to go along with a postponement of levying fines, as happened in 2022. According to him, that passed the legal test and was a signal for those who cannot afford a new car. Several Flemish parties also denounced the method by which the postponement had come about and its lateness, so they abstained from the vote.

Expensive price tag?

Before voting began Friday, there was also a protest by a hundred people near the Brussels parliament. Among other things, they drew attention to the danger of poor air quality and found the social argument of the initiators of the postponement misleading, for example.

“The measure has been known for eight years,” said Martine Van Dooren, chairwoman of the Association of Grandparents for Climate. “We spend millions on company cars. We might as well have found a way to financially support people who would have gotten into trouble because of the tightening.”

According to the activists, the postponement means an additional 3.5 billion euros will have to be spent on health problems for Brussels residents due to the concentration of fine dust in the air. They also expect Brussels to be fined 19 million euros by Europe because of the LEZ postponement.