Technical inspection for two-wheelers will come into force at the beginning of 2024. On June 1, the Council of State gave the government two months to define the procedures for organizing this technical inspection, in accordance with a European obligation dating from 2014, but never applied in France. A draft decree and a draft decree will be submitted for public consultation from Monday until July 22, according to a press release.
The government currently plans to make technical inspection compulsory from “early 2024” and “gradually according to the age of the vehicles”, that is to say that the oldest ones will have to be checked in first. The staggering of the entry into force, “until January 1, 2027”, “will avoid a bottleneck” in the control centers, according to the ministry. The subject has fueled the anger of bikers who have demonstrated several times against such an obligation in recent months in several cities in France, including Paris.
“We are going to demonstrate, do punching operations because we continue to oppose”, reacted to AFP on Saturday Jean-Marc Belotti, coordinator of the French Federation of Angry Bikers (FFMC ) for Paris and its inner suburbs. He judges that the looming device is “a pure racket”, “strictly useless”, for vehicles on which “one can see with the naked eye and very easily all the security organs”.
The government wants to include in the device two-wheelers whose size is less than 125 cm3, “because they present a high accident rate and can also be the source of pollution, air or noise, significant in the city”. On the other hand, it excludes motorcycles for sports use, not supposed to circulate on public roads.
Transport Minister Clément Beaune, quoted in the press release, said he wanted the device to be “the cheapest and simplest possible for two-wheeler drivers”. A discussion is “initiated with technical control professionals to encourage them to charge low prices”, specifies the ministry. The minister told Brut that he was aiming for a cost “around fifty euros”.
“Fifty bullets to go around a motorcycle in ten minutes, it’s a real scam”, plague Jean-Marc Belotti, of the FFMC.
The control will have to cover “all the fields of control (safety, air and noise pollution)” but will be “strongly simplified” compared to cars, with a number of control points divided by four. The Ministry of Transport estimates the number of two-wheelers affected at four million.
Clément Beaune also points out that a “very significant two-wheeler conversion bonus will be put in place, up to 6,000 euros for assistance with the purchase of an electric or very low-polluting vehicle”.
In August 2021, a decree provided for the start of technical inspection in January 2023 for vehicles registered before 2016, and later for others. But in the process, at the request of President Emmanuel Macron, the government had indicated that it would not apply it, because “it was not the time to bother the French”, specified then an adviser to the executive .
The associations Breathe, Ras the scoot and Paris without a car had seized the Council of State on several occasions to force the government to set up this technical control.