• From January 2023, private vehicles with a Crit'Air 4 sticker will no longer be able to drive in almost all of the Pink City.

  • A ban deployed within the framework of the Low Emissions Zone of the Toulouse metropolis which is causing concern, particularly within companies whose spokespersons have decided to sound “the alarm bell”.

  • The Toulouse metropolis indicates that it will not postpone the establishment of the ZFE but evokes progress, in particular with the establishment of a pass for small riders.


In 1968, when breeders decided to set up a processing plant for their dairy products north of Toulouse, their premises were surrounded by fields.

Today, the YéO Frais company, which produces more than 560,000 million yogurts each year, has been overtaken by the city and is now within the perimeter of the Low Emission Zone.

This device, which consists of prohibiting access to the oldest vehicles to a large part of the territory of the Pink City, will target next January vehicles with a Crit'Air 4 sticker. Which is far from trivial for a part of the 230 employees of the company YéO Frais, located on the avenue des Etats-Unis.

“We conducted a survey of our employees to find out what the impact of the deployment of the ZFE would be.

Half of the employees responded.

A third of them will be affected on January 1, their cars being Crit'Air 4 or 5. And in January 2024, with the Crit'Air ban, it will be a third more.

If nothing changes, two-thirds will no longer be able to come to work with their vehicle", deplores Jérôme Servières, the general manager of this company who hopes that this new constraint will not be prohibitive for these employees, who, for the most part, work in 3x8.



For some of them, the purchase of a vehicle represents a year's salary.

But, even with aid, this is not a feasible solution.

“When they start at 5 o'clock in the morning, there is no public transport and a large number of them live about thirty kilometers from the company.

So they need their car.

So we are thinking about carpooling, we also wondered about a minibus that could pick them up in Sesquières and go back and forth.

I am convinced that we will find a solution, but we will not be able to do it alone, ”continues this boss who does not want this to become an obstacle to hiring, he who is already struggling to recruit.

The alert of the employers' unions

And it is not the only one to have raised this problem with the Medef of Haute-Garonne.

Alongside the Departmental Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises (CPME 31), the employers' union has decided to sound the alarm on the issue of the ZFE, which has become "a major concern".

"We are not against the ZFE, it is an action to improve air quality in the urban agglomeration", recalls in the preamble Pierre-Olivier Nau, the departmental boss of the Medef.

“But merchants, whose customers will no longer be able to come to the city center, craftsmen who do not have derogations, even employees of SMEs are worried.

We would like to sit around the table with the prefecture, to calculate the socio-economic impact of this measure”, insists this spokesperson who would like a postponement of the implementation of the next bans to be considered.

A change of calendar which is however not topical for Toulouse Métropole.

“If we modify it, we have to go back to a regulatory procedure and that is not possible.

The Crit'Air 4 sticker represents only 4% of the rolling stock on the territory of the metropolis, or 440,000 vehicles.

In 2024, according to our model, 16% of these vehicles will be affected, i.e. 45,000 vehicles in total.

We never talk about it, but let's also look at the benefits of this measure for health and air quality, our job is to protect Toulouse residents, "insists François Chollet, vice-president of the metropolis in charge of Ecology. , sustainable development and energy transition.

A “small riders” pass authorized a few days a year

The elected official does not deny that in this period of high inflation, changing cars can be complicated for individuals.

“We have set up bonuses to help and they work quite well.

Over the past two years, 4,700 people have benefited from it for the purchase of a bicycle, mostly electric, and 470 this year for the purchase of a vehicle.

In total, we have released 2.2 million euros in bonuses since last year", continues François Chollet who, like Jean-Luc Moudenc, hopes that the State will be able to boost its aid for the most modest or deploy a loan to zero rate.

In the absence of being able to change the calendar, the latter indicates that a solution has been found for those who have a Crit'Air sticker 3, 4 or 5 and who only very rarely use their car.

“With good reason, they tell us that they are not going to change their car when they only do 3,000 km/year and they only come to town three times a year.

We are going to set up a "little wheeler pass".

As for a license with points, they will be able to come to the territory of the ZFE a certain number of times a year, as is done in Brussels", explains the vice-president of the metropolis who will bring together for the first time from here to the end of the year an observatory of the ZFE, to assess its effectiveness.

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  • Company

  • Toulouse

  • Occitania

  • Medef

  • Low Emission Zone (ZFE)

  • Car

  • Automotive

  • Pollution

  • pollution peak