Local car-scrapping program
Thousands of natural persons have already registered for the local car scrapping program in Romania
Mihai Pelin, 01.08.2023, 14:00
In Romania, registrations for the local segment of the car-scrapping program started on Monday. The start was not the best, since the application developed by the Environment Fund Administration got stuck after only a couple of minutes. However, the issues were fixed, and the Minister of the Environment, Mircea Fechet, says that there are already localities that have exhausted their allocated budget in this regard, with 12 thousand vouchers already issued on the first day.
500 town halls were registered in the program, and the earmarked budget is 240 million lei (approx. 48 million euros). For each older car, with Euro 3 or lower pollution standards, scrapped, Romanians will receive 3,000 lei (approx. 600 euros), without the obligation to buy a new car in exchange. Of this amount, 2,400 lei come from the Ministry of the Environment and 600 lei from the town hall.
The first step for the interested applicants is to create an account on the website of the Environment Fund Administration, www.afm.ro, and the approval for scrapping is granted only after the eligibility criteria have been checked. The car should be at least 15 years old, the owner must have their domicile in the town where the money is requested and must have paid all due local taxes and fees. It is also very important for the car owner to check whether their administrative-territorial unit – commune, city, municipality or sector – is enrolled in this program. Authorities say that the funding allows the scrapping of 100,000 old and polluting vehicles.
People accepted in the local car-scrapping program cannot use the money received to buy a second-hand car with a Euro 5 or lower pollution standard. People can sign up for the program until August 31 or until the allocated budget is used up. Next, the administration sends the list of those registered to the town halls, which will continue the procedure at the local level. According to the European Association of Automobile Manufacturers, at the end of 2021, Romania had one of the oldest car fleets in Europe, with an average age of 15.1 years, being exceeded only by the Czech Republic (15.6 years), Estonia (16.8 years) and Greece (17 years). At the opposite pole are Luxembourg (7.6 years), Denmark (8.5 years) and Austria (8.7 years).
According to the General Driving Licenses and Registrations Directorate (DGPCI), at the end of last year, over 7.8 million cars were registered in Romania, almost a third (2.4 million) over 20 years old, and 2.38 million aged between 16 and 20 years. Out of the total number of cars on the roads in Romania, only 1.5 million have been manufactured in the in the last 10 years. Romanians prefer diesel cars (over 50%), and the most bought models are Volkswagen and Dacia, manufactured at the Mioveni plant in southern Romania, owned by the French company Renault. Mention should be made of the fact that at the end of 2022, there were more than 24 thousand cars with fully electric motors, almost double compared to the previous year. (MI)
