The technical control of two-wheelers is about to see the light of day in France after long procrastination: it should be put in place gradually from “early 2024” by wanting to be “the cheapest and the simplest possible”, has the government announced on Saturday.
On June 1, the Council of State gave the government two months to define the terms of this technical control, in accordance with a European directive dating from 2014 but never applied in France.
A draft decree and a draft order will be submitted for public consultation from Monday until July 22, according to a press release from the Ministry of Transport.
The government plans for the time being to make technical inspection compulsory “at the beginning of 2024” and in a “gradual manner depending on the age of the vehicles”.
The oldest, registered before 2017, will have to be checked first, said Transport Minister Clément Beaune in an interview with the media Brut published on Saturday.
The staggering of the entry into force, “until January 1, 2027”, “will make it possible to 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, where several hundred motorcycles paraded on June 3.
“We are going to demonstrate, carry out punching operations because we continue to oppose” the measure, reacted Saturday to AFP 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”.
Clément Beaune, quoted in the press release, wants the device to be “the cheapest and simplest possible for drivers of two-wheelers”.
Mr. Beaune told Brut that he was aiming for a cost “around fifty euros”.
“Fifty bullets to go around a motorcycle in ten minutes is a real scam”, plague Jean-Marc Belotti, of the FFMC.
The government includes 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 significant air or noise pollution in the city”.
“Our request for a technical control for ALL motorized two-wheelers has been heard, it’s a great victory,” said Franck-Olivier Torro, spokesperson for the Ras le scoot association, in a statement to AFP. .
The associations Ras le scoot, Respire and Paris without a car had seized the Council of State on several occasions to force the government to set up this technical control.
The control will have to relate “to all the fields of control (security, atmospheric and noise pollution)” but will be “strongly simplified” compared to cars, with a number of control points divided by four, according to the ministry.
It is planned that the technical control only intervenes after five years for the owners of a new vehicle, then that it is necessary to control the vehicle every three years.
The Ministry of Transport estimates the number of two-wheelers affected at four million.
For owners of old vehicles, a “conversion bonus” will be set up next year, up to 6,000 euros “for assistance with the purchase of an electric or very low-polluting vehicle”.
The European Commission had imposed since 2014 a technical control in all the countries of the European Union, wishing its implementation from January 2022 for two-wheelers of more than 125 cm3, in the name of the safety of the motorcyclists but also of the ‘environment.
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, at the request of President Emmanuel Macron, the government had gone back, because “it was not the time to bother the French”, then specified an adviser to the executive.
06/24/2023 14:40:33 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP