A new windscreen sticker scheme called Crit'Air which all vehicles must display and which grades them according to age and fuel type was introduced for the first time in a temporary ban of most-polluting categories from the French capital which is witnessing a particularly high level of pollution this week.
The legislation, which will come into effect in 2020 and will see plastic replaced with biologically-sourced materials, has prompted threat of legal action by European packaging manufacturers.
The burkini bans introduced by mayors in some French coastal towns has divided ministers, while the Council of State will rule Friday on a legal challenge to the prohibitons.
France’s Council of State will on Friday announce its judgment on whether the ban of the burkini, recently applied by a number of mayors of coastal towns in France, is legal. The bans, imposed mostly in south-east France and amid the backdrop of recent Islamist terrorist attacks, supposedly target the full-body swimwear worn by some Muslim women. But the prohibitions also exclude dress that might threaten “public order”, and there was uproar this week after several reported incidents of police patrols intercepting Muslim women wearing headscarves on the beach. Carine Fouteau analyses a controversy that not only encroaches basic human rights, but which also has played into the hands of the Islamic State group which was behind this summer's terrorist attacks in France.
Bishop Nunzio Galantino denounced the ban in several coastal towns as a 'war on symbols' and a 'vulgar ridiculing of the religious sensitivity of others'.
The anti-pollution move concerns Monday to Friday daytime access and will become an outright ban in 2020, when access for pre-2011 cars will be restricted.
