There is now a requirement for all vehicles going into certain French cities to have a vignette related to the emissions of the vehicle. Failing to have the vignette can lead to a fine many times the cost of the vignette (which costs less than £10 including postage).

https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/motoring-news/law-change-for-uk-drivers-in-french-cities/

They can be sourced before going to France from the French government web site here - https://www.certificat-air.gouv.fr/. It is recommended that you use the government site to avoid rip off fees from third party websites - you have to give the same information and they are unlikely to be any quicker and possibly slower.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

This has been the case for a few years now, I bought one in 2019. It's only in the central parts of certain cities, though the scheme may have spread now. The application process is very easy and cheap.

One important thing to note is that owners of older bikes may want to check the emission rating of their machine to know where you can and cannot ride without fines.

Crit Air have been a requirement in certain cities for a few years now. I bought one for our old Land Rover when they first came out but all it does is confirm the thing is poisoning the planet one smog cloud at a time. I have them for the other vehicles we own / drive / borrow as we go through Grenoble often but they’re all in the glove box rather than on the windscreen. I’ve never seen one checked, or even on the windscreen of many French vehicles.

Quite what you do with bikes I’m not sure as it’s a windscreen sticker, and what you do with smokey old clunker bikes (such as I’ll be heading off to France on in a month or so) I’m not sure either. As is the case with a lot of these regulations ( and French ones in particular) the observation is often more theoretical than practical.

The Crit'Air vignette is supplied with a self adhesive square of sticky-back clear plastic film. To mount it on a solid surface, stick the vignette face first on the adhesive side of the film then stick the whole thing to the display surface.

Ha, that’s what comes of just chucking them in the glove box without looking at them. Not sure any of them are going to be much help on a 1970 two stroke though.

I "kinda - sorta" think that discretion might be the better part of compliance when it comes to getting a sticker for older motorcycles that are not registered in France, especially if a motorcycle is registered in a country that is a long way away from France - in my case, Canada.

I have a 2001 motorcycle, which would fall into category 4 (second worst). If I get a sticker and display it, and I am in an unfamiliar French city (and they are all unfamiliar to me) and the GPS guidance takes me through the emission controlled area, I'm just advertising that I am both non-compliant and that I know I am non-compliant. That's asking for trouble.

On the other hand, if I don't get a sticker, and I accidentally ride into an emission controlled area where I shouldn't be, and I get challenged by an authority, I can always plead ignorance of the rules and ask the authority both for forgiveness and for the shortest route out of the controlled area. I suspect that after they look at my Canadian licence plate and listen to my Quebec-accent French, they will cut me a little slack and not give me a ticket if I have made a mistake.

I'm not by any means suggesting disrespect for the emission controlled areas, I'm just suggesting that there is no benefit to the foreign rider to have such a sticker on their vehicle. AFIK, the sticker is not required on a vehicle if it is not operated within an emission controlled area.

Michael

Just an anecdote from a few weeks ago:

A german friend with a few years old EU5 Diesel car went to Brussels, Belgium for a weekend trip. He did not know about the emission zone, so did not carry any sticker on his german plated car.

It is still "sort of a debate", if they fine him for only one day at 350€ breaking the law, or for the whole weekend (700€), but I´m sure he´ll lose this argument.

The car was identified and the ticket was issued automatically and was sent to him within the following week.

It´s pretty tricky to identify these zones as non-local/-native speaker. Google Maps i.e. is lacking the feature to show these areas.

Google Maps shows the zones here, plus a reminder when you plot a route through one. But yes, the information (and signage) outside of that is patchy at best.

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FreeBSD fan since before it was cool ...

Be interesting to see if my UK reg 52 yr old two stroke clunker, with no chance whatsoever of qualifying for any sort of pollution sticker, will trigger a fine for passing through Madrid’s emissions zone last week. If they have identified me I wonder what they’ll do about my travelling companion’s identical bike but being ridden on US plates.

I am getting sick of these 'green mafia' zones.
Rotterdam and Antwerp have those zones too but they also have cruise- and cargo-ships in their harbour that cause more polution then all that cars and bikes together.
I guess money is more important than environment.

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Jan Krijtenburg

My bikes are a Honda GoldWing GL1200 and a BMW R1200GS

My personal homepage with trip reports: https://www.krijtenburg.nl/
YouTube channel (that I do together with one of my sons): motormobilist.nl

Probably not, a more likely scenario would be if the police saw you blow through a pedestrian crossing or something then they would go over every inch of your bike and hand you a bank account emptying prescription.

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FreeBSD fan since before it was cool ...

How is the display of a sticker enforced? Is it by cameras or by visual inspection by the police?
Do you need to show a sticker if you are only going to ride on a motorway that crosses a Crit’air zone?

Visual inspection.
No, provided you stay on the motorway until you leave the clean air zone, and you have entered the motorway prior to reaching the clean air zone that surrounds the motorway.