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BONUS-MALUS ANTI-POLLUTION SCHEME WILL BE SCALED BACK FASTER THAN INITIALLY PLANNED TO HELP CUT COSTS A BONUS scheme that rewards drivers for buying fuel-efficient cars is to be cut back

faster than originally planned, because it is losing money. The government announced last month that the pollution limits that apply to the _bonus-malus_ payments on new cars would be

reduced to cut costs. However, it has now emerged that it wants to cut them even further, by revising the limits every year instead of every two years. This should mean that fewer new cars

will benefit from the €700 reward, and more vehicles will fall into the _malus_ category and have to pay a penalty for their gas emissions. At the moment, anyone buying a car producing more

than 156g of CO² has to pay a €750 penalty. This is down from 161g earlier this year and will drop again to 151g in 2012 under the current plans. According to _Les Echos_, the scheme has

been a victim of its own success and is too expensive to maintain at its current level. It will be €500m in the red this year. More than half of new cars sold so far this year have benefited

from the €700 reward, up from 43 per cent in 2008. Polluting cars that attract the penalty represented just seven per cent of sales, down from 14 per cent two years ago. RELATED STORY:

Tighter pollution level on car sales