France Lorry Rules for a Move: Crit’Air, Low-Emission Zones and the Weekend Ban

Service-Public Entreprendre (opens in a new window) (page verified 5 October 2026) says there are 25 zones in mainland France. It sends readers to the ministry’s portal, Mieux respirer en ville, for the current list and to Itinériz, a route simulator aimed at freight transport. We did not copy a list of cities, because each zone has its own vehicles, days and hours.

A mayor or the head of an intercommunal body creates each zone by order. The order fixes the area, the vehicle classes, the days and hours and the reasons for individual exemptions, such as shift work, market traders or a limited number of day passes a year. A zone does not always cover the whole urban area, and the local authority usually publishes a map on its own site.

The law sets a floor. In the two zones with the strongest duties, Paris and Lyon, restrictions must reach light vans (the class is set locally) and cars of Crit’Air 3 or worse, which means petrol vehicles first registered before 2006 and diesel vehicles first registered before 2011. In other areas that meet legal air limits but exceed World Health Organization values, the legal minimum is a restriction on unclassified vehicles.

As an example, Service-Public says the Grand Paris zone bars light vehicles (up to 3.5 tonnes) that are unclassified or Crit’Air 3, 4 or 5 from Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm, public holidays excepted, and applies the same restriction to heavy vehicles seven days a week, 8am to 8pm. The City of Paris (opens in a new window) (page updated 30 December 2025) puts the boundary at the A86 motorway, A86 not included. Our guide to the Paris suburbs lists which of the larger suburbs the Métropole names in its 77 communes.

A zone is not the only limit on a heavy lorry. A commune can also restrict parking by weight: Le Blanc-Mesnil, outside the Métropole's list, bars trucks of 2.8 tonnes and over from parking in town apart from industrial zones and shared car parks, as its own parking page says. The Paris suburbs guide, linked below, names the larger communes around Paris.

The vehicles always allowed into a zone, on Service-Public’s list, are emergency and general-interest vehicles, defence ministry vehicles, vehicles with a disabled-parking card and low-emission buses and coaches. Removal lorries are not on it, though the local authority can issue temporary authorisations for specific situations, so ask whether your address needs one.

Lyon's zone is drawn by the Métropole de Lyon and reaches the parts of Villeurbanne, Bron and Vénissieux inside the Laurent Bonnevay ring road; the Villeurbanne page has that commune's own parking rule.

On the evidence of these pages, the zones remain in force on the date checked, 30 October 2026. Service-Public’s page, verified on 5 October 2026, still counts 25 zones. The Constitutional Council struck out, on 21 May 2026, an article of a simplification law that would have removed the zones.

The Council’s decision 2026-903 DC (opens in a new window) says article 37 was “adopté selon une procédure contraire à la Constitution”: it was added to the bill by an improper procedure. The Council added that it was not ruling on whether the content of those provisions conforms to the Constitution, so the decision settles a point of procedure and not the future of the zones.

We found no official source on any later bill, so this page does not call the zones permanent. In Grand Paris, the City of Paris says controls stay occasional and informational, with no sanction, until 31 December 2026.

Goods vehicles above 7.5 tonnes maximum laden weight may not use the road network from Saturday 10pm to Sunday 10pm, nor from 10pm the evening before a public holiday to 10pm on the holiday, according to a Service-Public news item (opens in a new window) published on 17 April 2024. Bison Futé says the order of 16 April 2021 sets this general regime.

The threshold is the vehicle’s permitted laden weight, not the size of the load. A vehicle at or under 7.5 tonnes is outside the order as Bison Futé describes it, and a heavier one is inside it unless an exception applies. Which side your removal vehicle falls on depends on its plated weight, and your removal company can tell you.

Bison Futé also lists specific bans on certain roads in Île-de-France, which it says allow no exception, and categories for the main tunnels: Fourvière in Lyon, Fréjus and Mont-Blanc. A separate page there covers temporary and permanent exceptions, which we did not read.

Bison Futé (opens in a new window) reports an order of 26 December 2025 with extra Saturday bans for 2026: 7am to 6pm in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes on 7, 14, 21 and 28 February and 7 March, and 7am to 7pm on the national road network on 11, 18 and 25 July and 1 and 8 August. All of those dates have passed. The page, read on 30 October 2026, lists no dates for 2027.

The dates move every year and orders can lift a ban for a day. The 2024 news item records the ban lifted on Thursday 9 May 2024, from midnight to 10pm, with an empty return still allowed. Bison Futé publishes a yearly brochure of the extra bans in several languages, English among them, so ask the removal company which dates it has checked for your move.