The never-ending story of Stuttgart
The situation in Stuttgart around environmental zones and diesel driving bans is anything but clear even at the beginning of 2020. There is unanimous confusion and general chaos.
Stuttgart has been fighting against driving bans for months. Actually, the situation should be completely clear and this fight should be marked by hopelessness, legally everything is in dry cloths: the city has to adhere to the implementation of the so-called and much-vaunted clean air plan. In 2017, the administrative court decided on the application of the organisation Deutsche Umwelthilfe to introduce comprehensive driving bans for EURO5 diesel in the Stuttgart low emission zone.
So much for the theory.
But if you take a closer look at the current situation around the topic in the Motorstadt on the Neckar, you might think you are watching a defiant and spoiled child refusing to keep his room in order, after several warnings from his parents.
Comprehensive driving bans for EURO5 Diesel in the entire environmental zone? Nothing.
This proverbial sentence with X goes even further, however, because even penalty payments which the city has already levied several times and which it had to pay by court order (paradoxically to itself) due to its inability to implement the instructed statutes seem to remain without effect. The city administration has already had to pay two warnings, amounting to 10,000 euros, and on other occasions around 15,000 euros. The public has been waiting in vain for the responsible persons in Stuttgart to come to their senses.
However, the metropolis and its green government do not have much time left.
So now the Administrative Court, the highest administrative authority in the state, is deciding on the future environmental policy course of the southern German metropolis. A departure from the driving bans issued years ago seems unrealistic and, in the first instance, simply unreasonable. It is now high time for the Stuttgart government to become aware of its responsibility to the health and safety of its citizens and finally present itself as a responsible city in 2020. The damage that has already been done, including the media shitstorm, should show that there is no realistic alternative to driving bans.
However, it remains to be seen when this circumstance will also be understood in Stuttgart's city hall.