Does Austria or any other European Union nation want to ban people from using cars for one day a week? No, that's not true: A search on Google News for the phrases "car ban for one day a week" and "Austria car ban" in English, and "evropská unie zákaz aut jeden den v týdnu" and "rakousko zákaz aut" in Czech did not reveal any factual reports that Austria or the EU would be implementing a ban on cars.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) posted by @raond78on on TikTok on September 13, 2023. The video opened (translated from Czech by Lead Stories):
State to ban people from driving 1 day a week: Drivers are furious about the new idea.
Some of the proposals that politicians come up with are truly bizarre. One of them is the idea of restricting the ability to drive.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of the writing of this fact check:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Sep 29 08:03:05 2023 UTC)
The original article featured in the video comes from the website Udalosti247.cz, which often publishes sensationalist headlines that can appear misleading, especially when viewed out of context.
The article alleges that Austria has opted for a car-free day.
Towards the end of the article, the headline is clarified with a paragraph titled "Ban to drive a car 1 day a week," which states that Austrian Minister for Climate, Environment, and Transport Leonore Gewessler, a member of the Green Party, proposed the concept. She proposed this measure to help the EU achieve its climate objectives.
Austria required drivers to decide on a car-free day nearly 50 years ago, as EU states scrambled to respond to the 1974 oil-price crisis. But this rule lasted only five weeks, the Austrian newspaper Heute reported.
