The Low Emission Zones of Madrid operated for years with regulations that the courts ended up declaring it illegal. During all that time, many fines were imposed and processed that thousands of drivers paid, and the City Council is clear about one thing: that there will be no refunds.
What exactly happened. The Supreme Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) annulled part of the ordinance that regulated ZBEs in Madrid in December 2024, following an appeal presented by the Vox municipal group. The court considered that the economic impact report was insufficient, since it had not been correctly assessed how much it would cost citizens and small businesses to adapt to the movement restrictions, nor had less restrictive measures with equivalent effects been explored.
As the ruling was not final at the time, the City Council continued to apply sanctions while appealing to the Supreme Court. However, the TSJM rejected the appeal on April 15with a sentence of 2,000 euros to the City Council for the expenses of the judicial process.
Why there will be no refund. Vice Mayor Inma Sanz counted that current jurisprudence prevents giving retroactive effects to sentences when the sanctioned rule was in force at the time the fines were imposed. Along the same lines, the delegate of Urban Planning, Mobility and Environment, Borja Carabante, defended that the sanctions were placed under a regulatory framework that was valid at the time.
The point that remains in the air. The City Council’s position is not completely uniform. Municipal legal services are still studying what to do with the fines imposed in the ZBEs of Plaza Elíptica and Centro (the two special protection zones) during the period between the TSJM ruling (December 2024) and the entry into force of the new ordinance (March 2026).
It has been more than two years in which fines have continued to be imposed with a regulation that a court had already declared null. Carabante acknowledges that “whether or not” these specific sanctions are being assessed.
The new ordinance as a shield. The Town Hall approved last month a new Sustainable Mobility Ordinance, correcting the previous one based on the indications indicated by the TSJM and keeps all ZBEs operational. The Consistory argues that this new ordinance leaves the sentence without practical effect, since it provides a solution to everything that the TSJM had requested. Among its novelties is that the vehicles of registered residents without an environmental label can circulate in Madrid as long as European pollution limits are respected.
Opinion division. The Associated European Motorists (AEA) organization has publicly demanded to Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida the annulment of all sanctions imposed until the publication of the new ordinance in the official gazette, on April 6. According to data from the AEA itselfbetween September 2021 and November 2025, the City Council imposed more than 3.3 million fines related to ZBEs for a value of more than 650 million euros.
Its president, Mario Arnaldo, consider that “hundreds of thousands of drivers” have been sanctioned with fines of “dubious legality” through a strategy designed to continue collecting while the judicial process lasted.
What those affected can do. The Supreme Court’s decision does not automatically annul any fine, but it reinforces the options of those who want to appeal them. According to the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU), the situation varies according to each file. And those who appealed at the time and still have the procedure open have a better chance of recovering the money. However, the organization says that those who paid without appeal face a more complicated path, having to go through requesting full nullity.
The OCU ask to the City Council to cancel the non-firm sanctions ex officio and return the amounts already collected in files still open, without transferring to the citizen “the burden of legal uncertainty created by an annulled ordinance.”
Cover image | Madrid City Council
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