Up to €150 million, according to the most pessimistic estimates from opposition groups, €14 million of which will be lost in the coming weeks. This is what the Valencia City Council stands to lose due to Vox's refusal to implement a Low Emission Zone (LEZ), required for cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants. The decision, already announced in October, was confirmed this week with the approval by the People's Party (PP) and the far-right party of the city's 2026 budget without including any restrictions on the circulation of the most polluting vehicles. The first penalty will come with the loss of government subsidies for passenger transport, which the national government makes conditional on the existence of an LEZ. To compensate, the city council will have to allocate €14 million of its own funds to maintain the reduced price of the 10-trip pass for the municipal bus network (EMT), which currently costs €5.40. Beyond the bus discount, the implementation of the Low Emission Zone (LEZ) was one of the requirements for receiving funding for urban development projects such as the Petxina superblock or the construction of various bike lanes, among others. This is the complaint of opposition groups, who point out that the Ministry of Transport could demand the return of its subsidies and could also impose fines of up to three times the amount of money provided by the State. This is the basis for the opposition's calculations, which amount to 150 million euros, slightly more than 10% of the city's budget, which will be 1.415 billion euros in 2026.

On September 15, Girona's low-emission zone (LEZ) will come into effect. The perimeter of the LEZ extends from Devesa Park to Carrer Emili Grahit, and from Carrer del Riu Güell to Carrer del Carme and the Barri Vell neighborhood. Entrances to the restricted area will be marked with signs, and photo surveillance cameras have also been installed. Restricted hours will be from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Friday. Outside of these hours, all vehicles may circulate without exception on weekends and midweek holidays. The LEZ control system in Girona uses 20 cameras located at 13 points along public roads in the city. These cameras take photographs of all vehicles that do not have an environmental sticker and that have not been previously authorized. The photographs of vehicles without an environmental sticker and unauthorized vehicles are sent to a database of the Barcelona Metropolitan Transport Authority (ATM), which performs two independent checks to ensure the license plate is correctly read.

Catalonia's High Court ruling against Barcelona's low-emissions zone (LEZ) have caused surprise and incomprehension, and not only in the administration, which is already working on an appeal. Since hundreds of cities across Europe have implemented similar measures to combat pollution, some a decade before the Catalan capital, how is it possible that a court decision urges the measure to be overturned and not only, in any case, to amend some of its parts? This is what air quality experts, scientists and citizens' organisations consulted by ARA had to say, going over main points of a resolution which they criticise for overlooking the right to health and containing "technical errors".

It is difficult to understand the ultimate meaning of Catalonia's High Court's ruling annulling Barcelona's low emission zone (LEZ), in a city with very high pollution rates and which has been in the European spotlight over this issue for some years now. In fact, the Catalan capital is one of the European cities with the highest vehicle traffic density. The High Court should not ignore that the European courts have opened a sanctioning procedure against Spain for the fact that both Barcelona (and several cities in its metropolitan area) and Madrid exceed in a "systematic and continuous" way the limits on nitrogen dioxide emissions (NO2). The LEZ that is now endangered –although not suspended, since there is room for judicial appeals– was a response to this justified and logical European pressure. Moreover, the European Environment Agency has warned that the LEZ is not enough. All this should be known by the judges of the Catalonia's High Court, whose ruling contradicts this environmental and judicial reality at European level.

Catalonia's High Court has annulled Barcelona's low emission zone (ZBE) "for lack of reports" supporting some of the restrictions and an excessive "geographical scope of implementation" and of affected vehicles. According to the court, the regulation does not sufficiently analyse the alternatives or the economic, social and market and competition consequences these measures may have, nor does it sufficiently assess the costs and benefits that rolling out the project imply for the population and the administration itself. "The need for municipal intervention to improve air quality is not in any way questioned, but rather whether the limiting measures adopted are proportionate in this case," the court rules. The judgment, motivated by appeals filed by several associations, is not final and the municipal government can lodge an appeal.

The veto on the most polluting cars in urban areas is to be extended (and fairly quickly) in the next few years to a large part of the Catalan municipalities. Towns with over 20,000 inhabitants will have to have a low-emission zone by 2025 to improve the quality of the air citizens breathe. The details, i.e., the minimum requirements that the zone will have to meet, will soon be unified by the Catalan Government, but the commitment to deploying them was sealed this morning by 65 municipalities out of the 67 with over 20,000 inhabitants (Esplugues de Llobregat and Sant Pere de Ribes have stayed out, for the moment) under the agreement to improve air quality in Catalonia. The affected municipalities have a total of 5,450,662 inhabitants.