Low emission zones: what do the Belgian parties propose?

What is a low emission zone, and where does it apply in Belgium?

A low emission zone bars vehicles whose emission standard is judged too old from an urban perimeter. Belgium does not have one such scheme but three, decided separately by each Region — and in 2026 those three paths diverge sharply.

In Brussels, the LEZ has covered the nineteen municipalities since 2018 and works through successive milestones. The latest has applied since 1 January 2026: Euro 5 diesel and Euro 2 petrol vehicles can no longer drive there, nor can petrol motorcycles below the Euro 3 standard. In Wallonia, the region-wide zone due to start in 2025 no longer exists: Parliament dropped it on 26 April 2024, confirmed by a decree of 29 April 2024. In Flanders, two cities apply a LEZ, Antwerp and Ghent, but the tightening planned for 1 January 2026 was cancelled by the Flemish government on 28 November 2025.

Three Regions, three trajectories: one accelerating under judicial constraint, one that gave up, one on hold. That is what makes the file politically readable — every party has had to take a position somewhere, and often a different one depending on the level of government where it sits.

How do you read these positions without taking sides?

Each party gets a sign here, not a mark: a green + when it clearly backs that direction, an amber ~ for an intermediate or conditional position, or one that varies by Region, and a red − when it opposes it. This system deliberately replaces stars or marks out of 5, which would suggest a moral ranking.

Two columns, two separate questions. The first is about keeping a binding LEZ timetable, with dated milestones and penalties. The second is about support measures: exemptions, social rates, grants, free public transport for households losing the use of their car. A party can want a firm timetable and broad support — that is the Ecolo and Groen position — just as it can want the reverse.

One point of honesty about this table. Low emission zones are a regional competence, and several parties have no documented position in all three Regions at once: the ~ sometimes signals a genuinely nuanced stance, sometimes simply the absence of a recent, verifiable position. The PS illustrates the first case — it backed the Brussels postponement while defending the principle of the scheme. Vooruit and Open VLD fall rather into the second.

Why did the Constitutional Court block the Brussels postponement?

Because it found that the postponement infringed the right to health and a healthy environment. The Brussels government had adopted an ordinance on 21 March 2025 pushing the planned milestone back by two years, letting Euro 5 diesels drive until 31 December 2026. In ruling no. 115/2025 of 11 September 2025, the Constitutional Court suspended that text, then annulled it.

The reasoning deserves spelling out, because it is unusual. To suspend a legal norm, the Court must find a risk of serious harm that is difficult to repair. It found it in the situation of one of the applicants: a child with chronic asthma and allergies, for whom two more years of exposure cannot be undone. The original timetable took effect immediately.

What makes the episode politically instructive is who wanted the postponement. The MR, the PS and Les Engagés — three parties few files bring together — had agreed to shift the deadline to 2027. The fault line therefore did not run between left and right, but between those looking first at the budgets of the households concerned, put at more than 30,000 in the Brussels Region, and those looking first at air quality. The final decision, though, did not come from a vote.

What does the Brussels reform approved in July 2026 change?

It moves the dial from prohibition to pricing. The Brussels government formed in February 2026 had committed to overhauling the penalty regime; on 16 July 2026 it approved, in first reading, a scheme that keeps the LEZ while cushioning its financial blow.

In practice, the headline measure is an annual pass of 350 euros, renewable for up to five consecutive years, allowing a non-compliant vehicle to drive. That pass falls to 200 euros for people entitled to increased benefit status and living in the Brussels Region. A full exemption is planned at the final milestone for those same people if they have professional income or at least three dependants. On penalties, the quarterly fine of 350 euros would give way to a monthly fine of 80 euros.

Two criticisms are circulating, and they do not come from the same side. For air quality campaigners, a paid pass amounts to selling the right to pollute to those who can afford it, which hollows out part of the scheme's purpose. For motoring associations and part of the French-speaking press, the reduced rate reserved for Brussels residents creates a territorial inequality: a low-income Walloon commuter pays 350 euros a year where a Brussels neighbour pays 200. Both objections hold, and neither answers the other.

Why did Wallonia abandon its low emission zone?

On the basis of studies concluding it would be ineffective outside cities. The 2019 decree on air pollution from road traffic provided for a phased ban on the most polluting vehicles across the whole Walloon territory from 2025. Two studies by the ISSeP, the Walloon public science institute, led to that choice being revisited: nitrogen dioxide concentrates in urban centres, and banning vehicles in Bastogne or Marche-en-Famenne changes almost nothing there.

The Walloon Parliament voted the repeal on 26 April 2024, confirmed by a decree of 29 April 2024, just before the end of the legislature. The same studies remain favourable to municipal LEZ in the larger cities — Liège, Charleroi, Namur, Mons — and that door was not closed. In practice, none has been activated since.

This file shows how far the debate turns on scale rather than principle. Nobody in Wallonia argued that air pollution has no health effect; the winning argument was about the ratio between the constraint imposed on tens of thousands of rural motorists and the measurable benefit. In Brussels, conversely, traffic density makes the same calculation far more favourable to the scheme.

Is Flanders dismantling its low emission zones?

It has suspended their tightening without abolishing them. Antwerp and Ghent apply a municipal LEZ, and a tightening was scheduled for 1 January 2026: diesels registered before 2015, meaning Euro 5, would have been excluded. The Flemish government confirmed on 28 November 2025 that this tightening would not go ahead.

The decision ran into a legal obstacle. On 27 October 2025 the Council of State issued an unfavourable opinion, holding that rolling back the tightening could harm public health and that the government would then have to take offsetting measures. The executive held its course, Environment Minister Jo Brouns (CD&V) arguing that air quality standards were now being met everywhere and that a further turn of the screw was no longer needed.

The rest is deferred. Bart De Wever, then mayor of Antwerp, had proposed as early as 2024 to scrap the Antwerp and Ghent zones. An evaluation of the Flemish LEZ is planned for 2027, and the study covering the Ghent zone specifically has been pushed back to spring 2027. In other words the question is not settled: it is parked pending a costing — which, depending on your viewpoint, is methodological caution or political stalling.

What do the figures say about how well LEZ work?

The Brussels data document a real effect, above all on the make-up of the fleet. Bruxelles Environnement records that between 2018 and 2022 the share of diesel vehicles on the road in the capital was nearly halved, and that nitrogen dioxide concentrations fell by as much as 30% at the busiest locations. NO2 is the pollutant LEZ target most directly, since it comes largely from diesel engines.

The Flemish figures tell another part of the story. If standards are met everywhere, as the Flemish government argued, the marginal gain from one more milestone becomes small next to the number of households it excludes. The two findings do not necessarily contradict each other: a LEZ delivers most of its effect when it removes the dirtiest vehicles, and much less afterwards, once the fleet has turned over.

Then there is acceptability, where the data are thinner. A survey published in July 2026 by the campaign group Les chercheurs d'air concludes that a majority of Brussels residents support the LEZ — a campaigning commissioner, so a result to handle with care. Against that, the more than 30,000 Brussels households directly hit by the 2026 milestone are a social reality this kind of survey measures poorly: a majority can support a principle whose cost it does not bear.

What this comparison does not settle

It does not say what becomes of the excluded vehicles. A car banned in Brussels is still allowed in Namur or Arlon, and can be resold in Wallonia, in Flanders or abroad. The fleet is not destroyed, it moves — a point supporters of the scheme rarely address, and one its opponents sometimes use to deny any local benefit, which does not follow either: the pollution people breathe depends on where vehicles drive, not on whether they exist.

Nor does it factor in your own situation. Whether you live on a congested central Brussels street with an asthmatic child, commute from Hainaut in a 2013 car, or already drive a Euro 6, the same measure changes colour completely. The useful reflex is not to remember a winning camp, but to identify who pays in each scenario, what is promised in compensation, and on what horizon.

How can you check these positions yourself?

The sources are public and dated. Ruling no. 115/2025 can be consulted on the Constitutional Court website; Bruxelles Environnement publishes the LEZ evaluation reports and the detail of exemptions; the Walloon decree of 29 April 2024 appears in the Moniteur belge, and the ISSeP studies behind it are accessible; VRT NWS, RTBF, BX1, Le Soir and La Libre have followed the Flemish and Brussels decisions step by step. Each party's 2024 manifesto gives the line it set out before coalition compromises.

To dig faster, the comparator puts two parties side by side on mobility, the ranking sums up positions theme by theme, and the quiz starts from your priorities rather than a manifesto. Our mobility comparison places low emission zones within the wider transport debate, and the article on company cars covers the other big tax lever on the Belgian car fleet. The methodology explains how these positions are gathered, and remains open to challenge.