Since this weekend, Flanders has a new government and embarks now on a new course to appease mobility and the environment. The latter comes off second-best as LEZ zones are ‘frozen’ to their current restrictions, and the 2029 ban on new cars with combustion engines (ICE) is set back by six years to 2035.

And yes, potential new EV owners will see government subsidies vanish and have to pay road taxes like everyone else. Slackening the reins on ICE cars, scrapping incentives, and taxing EVs won’t be the right way to stimulate the man in the street to go electric soon. Belgium, along with Germany, is one of the countries where private car owners are most reluctant.

With the new government and the liberal Open Vld party’s exit from the majority to the opposition, there is also a new minister for Mobility and Public Works: Annick De Ridder. De Ridder, the current Alderwoman for Antwerp Harbor, is an Antwerp lawyer who started her political career with Open Vld and switched in 2013 to the Flemish nationalist party, N-VA.

One reason she’ll take charge of the Department of Public Works is that N-VA, with its President Bart De Wever, who is also the current Antwerp Mayor, wants someone ‘local’ to supervise the Oosterweel project, one of Europe’s most prominent road infrastructure works of the century.

Scrapping premiums and taxing EVs

Annick De Ridder will first scrap the Flemish EV subsidies of up to €5,000, introduced by her predecessor Lydia Peeters (Open Vld), from January 2025 on.

The next big thing will be taxing EVs. At the negotiating table, all parties—N-VA, Vooruit, and CD&V—agreed that the ‘zero tariff’ will no longer be tenable as the growing fleet of electric cars widens, putting pressure on the budget.

No concrete figures are known today, but they considered letting EV drivers pay road tax incrementally, starting by 25%, from 2025 to 2026. According to some media, there will also be a registration tax for EVs in the future, but both taxes will apply for the time being only for new registrations.

Foreign cars will also have to pay a road tax in the future to use the Flemish highways, a digital vignette similar to what freight trucks above 3.5 tons already pay all over Belgium. There is no sign in the agreement of a kilometer tax for Flemish and all Belgians by extension so far.

Relaxing LEZ rules

Low-Emission Zones (LEZ) in Antwerp and Ghent are slackening the rules, as further restrictions due for 2026 are ‘frozen’ unrestricted in time. That means diesel cars with Euro 5 standard (or higher) and gasoline-driven vehicles with Euro 2 standard (or higher) will have access to the Antwerp LEZ beyond the end of 2025.

The new coalition partners are convinced that CO2 reduction and improved air quality in these cities will follow, with more EVs gradually on the roads. More EVs? That will probably have to come at the expense of company cars, as the new policy isn’t precisely stimulating private EV ownership.

Luckily, this large fleet of new company cars decreased the average emissions from new cars sold in Belgium by over 40% between 2019 and 2023, reaching 85.3 grams of CO2 for the entire fleet in 2023. That’s already far better than the European average of 108 grams of CO₂ per kilometer and below the EU threshold set for 2025 of 94 g/km.

Brussels will most likely postpone its LEZ restrictions from 2025 to 2027. The negotiators of a new Brussels government, MR, PS, and Les Engagés, and Open Vld approved the proposal of an ordinance in the Environment Committee of the regional Parliament.

Driver’s license with points

Last but not least, the driver’s license with points is looming again. The new Flemish government wants to bundle in a central database all fines collected by regional authorities, such as cities, for minor traffic infractions for later use as a point system for future driver’s licenses. But the introduction of that is a federal matter in Belgium.