What will you be able to do in 2023 if you have a car labeled B? In a few months there will be important changes in all municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants.
Since they officially came into force in 2018, the DGT environmental label has become essential for moving around the center of Madrid and Barcelona by car. This element determines which vehicles can or cannot access, circulate and park in these cities. But, next year the two great capitals will not be the only ones that will restrict traffic.
And it is that the new Climate Change and Energy Transition Law approved in 2021 by the Government determines that all those Spanish cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants must have a Low Emissions Zone (ZBE), some areas where it is not allowed access and circulation to all types of vehicles.
The examples of Madrid and Barcelona
At the moment, Madrid and Barcelona are the clearest examples of large cities with ZBEs that have been active for some years now. It seems that the new low emission areas in municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants from next year will be inspired by them, some areas that will be managed by each city council.
If we analyze these specific cases, in Madrid category A vehicles, which are those that do not have an environmental label, cannot access or park in any of the streets of the ZBE or the interior area of the M-30, with exceptions such as police cars, ambulances and firefighters, among others.
For its part, in Barcelona they follow the same logic as in the Spanish capital, restricting access to cars and motorcycles without an environmental sticker from the General Directorate of Traffic. So, given this imminent change that we will experience in just three months, what will you not be able to do in 2023 if you have a yellow B environmental label car.
What will you be able to do in 2023 if you have a car labeled B?
Vehicles with a B label are those with a yellow sticker on the front glass. It includes gasoline cars and vans registered between 2000 and 2006 that comply with the Euro 3 emission regulations. This same badge also includes diesel vehicles registered between 2006 and 2014 that comply with the Euro 4 and Euro 5 regulations.
In the specific case of Madrid, cars with sticker B can access the Low Emissions Zone, but they are not allowed to park on the street. To be able to park the vehicle, you must go to a public car park. Meanwhile, in Barcelona there are no restrictions at the moment for vehicles with this environmental label, so they can access and park on the street.
As for what you can or will be able to do in 2023 if you have a car with environmental label B, it remains to be seen how the different Spanish municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants that are already preparing to implement their own low-emission areas will act.
Logic dictates that they should follow the examples of Madrid and Barcelona, which have been active for some time and have been shown to work, but in principle there may not be any access and mobility problems, as is the case in Barcelona. What is clear is that no vehicle without an environmental label will be able to access the new ZBE.
What will happen in the next few years?
To reach this conclusion we have based ourselves on one of the latest texts published in the Official State Gazette (BOE) by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge in relation to the prohibitions and restrictions that will be applied to the ZBE in the future.
These texts specify that these restrictions “will primarily affect vehicles with the most polluting potential, such as vehicles A, and, progressively, vehicles B and C”.
This means that in the coming years we will see how, gradually, access to low-emission zones will be restricted to more and more vehicles. To do this, the prohibitions will go from the most polluting to the least, so the first to suffer these limitations will be cars with a B label (after category A vehicles without an environmental label, of course).