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Parisians to vote on extra parking fees for SUVs

Parisians will on Sunday have the chance to vote on plans to increase parking fees for SUVs.

Published: 14 November 2023 18:20 CET
Updated: 2 February 2024 11:56 CET
Parisians to vote on extra parking fees for SUVs
Paris' mayor Anne Hidalgo Photo by Geoffroy VAN DER HASSELT / AFP

The vote comes after City Hall said last November that space taken up by cars in the French capital had fallen thanks to its “determined action” but that the average size and weight of cars had gone up.

The vote, which takes place on Sunday, February 4th, will be the second city-wide referendum on urban matters, after residents voted to ban rental e-scooters from the capital last April.

If the plan is approved, residents can expect rapid action. Rented electric scooters vanished from Paris streets just a few months after the vote, in September.

Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs), sometimes known as 4x4s, can weigh 2,700 kilos or more, around a third more than regular automobiles.

“They’re accident-prone, heavy, bulky and polluting,” the mayor’s office said, and had been identified as “the cause of many problems in the public space”.

As well as having higher emissions levels, safety concerns have also been raised about SUVs due to the higher risk of injury to a pedestrian or cyclist in case of a collision.

 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by Anne Hidalgo (@annehidalgo)

The French government already imposes extra taxes on vehicles that weigh over 1.6 tonnes, which includes most medium and large SUVs.

If the vote goes in favour of the fee hike, it would not concern SUV owners with residential parking permits issued by the city.

The mayor’s office said it hoped to send “a message” to auto companies inciting them to stop “their race to gigantism that is unsuitable to quality of life in the city”.

This, it said, would “allow an improved sharing of public spaces in favour of clean mobility, streets with schools and pedestrians”.

SUVs accounted for 49 percent of new passenger car sales in the European Union last year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.

The French city of Lyon is also introducing extra charges for parking for SUVs. 

In April, Parisians voted overwhelmingly to banish for-hire electric scooters from the streets of the French capital. Turnout for the referendum was 100,000, representing just under 7.5 percent of the capital’s registered voters.

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COST OF LIVING

What is considered a good salary in Paris?

The higher-paying jobs are heavily concentrated in the French capital, but set against that is the high cost of living - especially the cost of renting or buying a home. So what is considered a 'high-earner' in Paris?

Published: 25 June 2024 16:51 CEST
What is considered a good salary in Paris?

Centrist Renaissance candidate Sylvain Maillard, running for re-election in France’s snap parliamentary elections, was trying to highlight the high cost of living in the capital in a debate on RMC Radio 

“You have extremely expensive rents [in Paris], between €1,500 and €1,700, and then there are all the charges and taxes to pay,” he said.

But what most people seized on was his comment that anyone earning €4,000 a month after tax would not be considered rich in Paris – he predictably was accused of being out of touch with French people’s lives.

There’s no doubt that €4,000 a month is good salary that most people would be happy with – but how much do you need to earn to be considered ‘rich’ in Paris?

National averages

Earlier this year, the independent Observatoire des Inégalités calculated poverty and wealth levels in France.

READ ALSO How much money do you need to be considered rich in France?

According to its calculations, to be considered ‘rich’ in France, a single person with no dependants needs to earn more than €3,860 per month, after taxes and social charges. Around eight percent of single workers have this sum deposited into their bank balance every month, it said.

A total of 23 percent of workers take home €3,000 or more every month, while the top 10 percent clear €4,170. 

To be in the top one percent of earners in France in 2024, one person must bring in at least €10,000 per month. After taxes and social charges.

The median income – the median is the ‘middle value’ of a range of totals – of tax households in mainland France is €1,923 per month after taxes and social charges, according to INSEE 2021 data, which means that a ‘rich’ person earns about twice as much as a person on the median income, according to the Observatoire.

Paris situation

About 75 percent of people living in Paris earn less than €4,458 per month, according to Insee data – so according to those calculations, 25 percent of Parisians earn the equivalent of the top 10 percent in France. 

But that city-wide average still hides a wide degree of variation. In the sixth arrondissement, the median income is €4,358 per month, after tax. In the seventh, it’s €4,255.  Further out, those bringing home €4,600 a month in the 19th and 20th arrondissements are among the top 10 percent in wealth terms.

But still, the median income in Paris is €2,639, significantly higher than the €1,923 France-wide median.

That would mean – using the Observatoire des Inégalités’ starting point for wealth – that a Paris resident, living on their own, would have to bring home €5,278 per month to be considered ‘rich’. 

France is a heavily centralised country, with many of the highest-paying industries concentrated within the capital, meaning there is much more opportunity to secure a high-wage job if you live in Paris.

Cost of living

Even these figures should all be taken with a pinch of salt because of the relatively high cost of living in the capital, compared to elsewhere in France. Paris is objectively an expensive place to call home.

In 2023, France Stratégie published a report on the disposable income of French households, after housing, food and transport costs were deducted. It found that, on average, people living in the Paris region had more left to spend, due to higher incomes and despite the fact that housing costs more.

It’s the income paradox in action. A person with a take-home salary of €4,000 per month has more money to spend if they live and work outside Paris. But they’re much more likely to earn that much if they live and work in Paris, where it’s not as valuable. 

Someone who earns a ‘rich-level’ salary in Paris might not appear rich – because they live in an expensive area, and a surrounded by very wealthy people in property that’s out of reach all-but the fattest of wallets. But they’re still earning more than twice the median income in France.

And that’s what Sylvain Maillard was getting at, clumsily as he may have expressed it.

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