Minister vows to save Vespas from EU ‘eco-craziness’
They were ridden by Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday, adopted by the Mods in Britain, and now grace museums around the world, from Milan’s Triennale to New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The Vespa scooter remains a symbol of Italian postwar freedom and swagger.
Now Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister and transport minister, has vowed to save the vehicles from the “ecocraziness” of the European Union’s green deal.
Salvini’s nationalist League party, part of the ruling coalition, has submitted a draft law that would recognise the Vespa as an example of “national cultural heritage”. The party says the law would exempt the vehicles from future traffic restrictions imposed by local, national or European lawmakers.
“This is a common-sense proposal that the League will pursue to defend a heritage, a myth and an Italian symbol on two wheels that is known and admired all over the world,” Salvini said in a Facebook post.
Piaggio began producing the Vespa in 1946, and lovers of historic models have praised Salvini’s announcement.
“Vespa owners need to be protected,” said Alessia Galiotto, national secretary of Vespa Club d’Italia. “Like spaghetti and pizza, Vespas are symbols of Italy.” Galiotto, who owns about 90 Vespas, which she keeps in a “private museum” warehouse in Vicenza, said the club had called for the draft law last year. League representatives for the Veneto, Lombardy, Liguria and Lazio regions, as well as the EU parliament, had subsequently taken up the cause, she said.
Vespa Club d’Italia counts 95,000 members, many of them with retro models produced between the 1940s and 1970s. The club organises about 1000 events, including scooter rides around Italy, every year.
But the scooters are infamously polluting. Their two-stroke engines, powered on oil and petrol, produce as much pollution as 30 to 50 four-stroke ones. In 2019, Genoa, where the Vespa was invented, followed the likes of Amsterdam in banning older models from parts of the city centre.
Many fear even tougher restrictions from the EU, which is planning to ban the sale of new CO2-emitting cars by 2035 to cut emissions.
Salvini has said he will defend Italians from other EU policies, describing the green homes directive approved in March as “the umpteenth European madness”.
Galiotto said that while old Vespas were undoubtedly polluting, “owners don't use them every day. They get them out for special occasions”. – The Times