Higher parking fees and taxes: The Greens are also targeting SUVs in Switzerland

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An hour for 18 euros: anyone who drives an all-terrain vehicle in Paris will have to dig deep into their wallets in the future. In a vote on Sunday, a majority of voters voted in favor of tripling parking fees for SUVs. The new rate list is expected to come into effect in the autumn.

“The vote showed that Parisians are at the forefront of a movement that will find followers in many cities around the world,” said Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo (64). The result fills her with pride. The measure is justified on environmental and safety arguments.

It’s already getting expensive in Geneva

In fact, left-wing politicians in Swiss cities and cantons are also flirting with asking SUV drivers to pay more. Just a few weeks ago, the Grand Council in the canton of Basel-Stadt approved a proposal from a green politician calling for higher taxes on SUVs. The government must now take a position on the question in the next step.

Driving an SUV in the canton of Geneva is already very expensive. The canton has by far the highest motor vehicle tax for cars with a lot of horsepower, according to a TCS comparison. For a luxury SUV you pay more than twice as much as in all other cantons.

Zurich also wants to take action

How to increase parking fees for off-road vehicles in Paris is currently being discussed in the city of Zurich. Parking rates are currently being adjusted there. Green councilor Markus Knauss (62) tells 20 Minutes that his party’s goal is to rank the compensation for the blue zones by weight. “We would also prefer Zurich to be free of SUVs, as they pollute the environment more, take up more space and are more dangerous in the narrow streets,” he says. Because a ban does not fall within the city’s jurisdiction, parking fees are the starting point.

Bern also increased parking rates last year. However, proposals from the Greens to demand more from SUV drivers did not win a majority.

The Greens are calling for a ban on SUVs

However, an SUV ban is certainly a problem – on a national level. The then Geneva Green National Councilor Isabelle Pasquier-Eichenberger (50) submitted a proposal last year calling for a ban on the import of heavy off-road vehicles from 2025. The politician argued that more than every second newly registered car is an SUV. A trend that is at the expense of the environment. The average fuel consumption of new cars in Switzerland has increased since 2016.

As early as 2008, the Young Greens wanted to ban particularly environmentally harmful cars with the Stop Off-Roader Initiative. The initiative was withdrawn because the Federal Council agreed to a counter-proposal: it lowered the average permitted CO2₂-Emissions from new cars. The maximum permitted value has now been further reduced in line with EU regulations. However, the target has been missed for years. In 2023 alone, car importers had to pay fines of more than 15 million francs.

Source:Blick