Bogdan Tudorache
The General Council of the Municipality of Bucharest (CGMB) on Tuesday repealed the ecological vignette Oxigen, whereby polluting cars paid a tax to enter the Capital, according to a statement on the website of the City Hall of the Municipality of Bucharest (PMB).
“At the proposal of the Mayor, Gabriela Firea, the General Council of the Municipality of Bucharest approved the draft decision regarding the repeal of HCGMB no. 539/2019 regarding concrete measures to improve the air quality in Bucharest, which provided for the introduction of the ecological vignette and restrictions in the central area of ZACA – the most affected by pollution, for the highly polluting cars: non euro, euro 1, Euro 2 and Euro 3,” is shown in the press release.
“We initiated that project to support and supplement the measures taken by the City Hall to improve air quality. During the public debate on the introduction of the ecological vignette, most of Bucharestians did not oppose the measures. However, after the entry into force of the normative act, respectively on January 1, many contestants of the project appeared, and some of them filed preliminary complaints, requesting the court to annul the decision to introduce the anti-pollution measure. Therefore, we conducted – at that time – a public consultation, and 85% of the respondents supported the cancellation of traffic restrictions and vignette. Also, there were 441 previous complaints filed by citizens or organizations, which ask the court to annul the decision on the introduction of the vignette,” said the general mayor, Gabriela Firea.
“As I do not believe in the success of a normative act that does not have the support of those who should respect it, I propose its withdrawal. We do not abandon the Oxygen project itself, we continue with a lot of other measures – some are already started, others are in the plan – others have pilot stages and we want to expand them, because they have been successful, so we are working on this chapter later – on many pillars. It is just a battle that we may have to rethink, the war with continuous pollution.”
As for the vignettes purchased so far, their value will be reimbursed.