Repeatedly postponed, the measure should finally come into force. The technical inspection of two-wheelers will be gradually implemented from April 2024 depending on the age of the vehicles, according to a decree published Tuesday October 24 At Official newspaperafter months of procrastination for the application of a 2014 European directive.
The first vehicles to be subject to technical inspection, from April and before mid-August or the end of 2024, will be those registered before 1er January 2017. The 1er June 2023, the Council of State had given the government two months to define the modalities for organizing this technical control, in accordance with a European obligation dating from 2014, but never applied in France.
Staggering the entry into force until the end of 2026 should make it possible to avoid bottlenecks in the control centers, which will be able to benefit for a year from April from an extension of their approval if they are already authorized to carry out checks on light vehicles or heavy vehicles.
“Cheapest and simplest possible” control
The first inspection of category L vehicles registered between 1er January 2017 and December 31, 2019 must be carried out in 2025, that of vehicles registered between 1er January 2020 and December 31, 2021 in 2026, according to the decree.
Those registered after 1er January 2022 will have to be subject to a first inspection “within six months preceding the expiration of a period of four years from the date of their first putting into circulation”then every two years, according to the highway code.
The subject fuels the anger of bikers who have demonstrated several times against such an obligation in recent months in several cities in France, including Paris, where several hundred motorcycles paraded on June 3.
The government said it wanted control “as cheap and simple as possible” and estimates the number of two-wheelers affected at four million.
The European Commission had imposed a technical inspection in all countries of the European Union in 2014, wanting its implementation from January 2022 for two-wheelers over 125 cubic centimeters, in the name of the safety of motorcyclists but also of the environment. In August 2021, a decree provided for the start of technical inspection in January 2023 for vehicles registered before 2016, and later for others.