The French-speaking Greens want to introduce a social leasing scheme for electric vehicles in Belgium, modeled after the French system. This is reported by the newspapers La Libre Belgique and La Dernière Heure.
Ecolo is proposing a pilot project in which 10,000 EVs – preferably small, urban models manufactured in Europe – would be leased long-term to employees earning less than the median salary for approximately €100 per month.
The Greens estimate the cost of the pilot project at 70 million euros.
Leasing with an option to buy
“We want to reach more people who work and really need their cars. I’m thinking of nurses, home care workers, self-employed people who drive from one job site to another, and so on,” says Ecolo co-president Gilles Vanden Burre.
The plan is for the government to purchase a fleet of 10,000 EVs and then lease them long-term to a specific group of citizens: people earning less than €4,000 gross per month.
The lease period would last three to five years, and at the end of the lease, the lessee would have the option to purchase the car at its residual value, which would be around €5,000 to €8,000, depending on the model.
Huge success in France
In 2024, France introduced a social leasing program that gave certain households access to an EV for approximately €100 per month. Interest was overwhelming: more than 90,000 applications were received in just six weeks, even though only 25,000 contracts had initially been planned. Finally, more than 50,000 orders were validated, the same number of cars as planned for this year.
To be eligible, applicants had to have a reference taxable income of less than €15,400 per share and drive more than 8,000 km per year for work purposes.
In France, every taxpayer is allocated a certain number of “parts” (shares) based on their family situation. A single person (1 part) may therefore have a maximum reference taxable income of €15,400, a couple without children (2 parts) a maximum of €30,800, and a couple with two children (3 parts) a maximum of €46,200.
Apart from its success, the fact that the network of charging stations in rural areas of France was/is insufficiently developed also brought some of the system’s shortcomings to light.
Social leasing primarily reached the middle class and failed to reach the most vulnerable groups, such as the unemployed, retirees, and people far removed from the labor market. Moreover, a few manufacturers dominated the market, raising questions about competition and territorial equity.
Little enthusiasm, except at Vooruit
Ecolo estimates the pilot project’s cost at 70 million euros, but the chances of the opposition party’s proposal passing are currently quite slim.
The De Wever federal government recently reached an agreement on a temporary, limited package of energy support measures to mitigate high energy prices, totaling 80 million euros. But Belgium must tighten its budget, and the Prime Minister has already made it clear on several occasions that there is no money for additional measures.
At the Flemish level, the ruling party Vooruit expressed support for social leasing in January, but Flemish Minister of Mobility Annick De Ridder (N-VA) made it clear she has no intention of implementing such a system. The Minister called it a “fausse bonne idée” (a false good idea) at the time.
“There are plenty of alternatives,” said De Ridder. “We’ve just abolished subsidies; I’m not going to introduce new ones. It also sends the wrong signal. (…) It’s not in the coalition agreement, and it’s not on my radar to get started on it,” said De Ridder. Coalition partner CD&V was also not convinced by the Vooruit proposal at the time.
