In the run-up to the 23 October Environment Council, when EU environment ministers are due to meet in Luxembourg, EEB, Europe's largest coalition of environmental citizens' organisations, has reminded ministers that Europe's environmental NGOs have high expectations for them to support strong clean air legislation for Europe. EEB particularly urged them to halt any dilution of the existing standards.


In Luxembourg , ministers will decide on a revised Directive setting ‘ambient air quality' standards. The general approach taken by environment ministers before the summer failed to improve on the Commission's proposal by scrapping unworkable exemptions or setting meaningful and binding new standards for health-threatening fine dust particles (PM2.5). Instead, ministers weakened the text by introducing a new exemption which defines areas where air quality standards do not apply at all.

At least ministers have made clear that time extensions to meet air quality standards (the latter should already have been met last year) are limited to a maximum of three years once the new Directive becomes law next year. This is considerably better than Parliament's position, which would allow excessive delays of up to six years, until 2013. Parliament has also requested the weakening of the existing particulate matter (PM10) standards.

In its letter to ministers of 4 October, (see EEB's letter to ministers of 4 October [1]) EEB called on them to reject unworkable exemptions which endanger health, not to follow Parliament's excessive extensions on deadlines for implementation, and to introduce binding standards for PM2.5 by setting a concentration cap of 12µg/m3.

“The quality of the air we breathe is one of the very tangible results that the EU's environmental policies have provided to citizens. There is still scope to improve existing targets and reduce the number of people who die prematurely and who suffer from diseases caused by breathing polluted air”, said Stefan Scheuer, EEB's Policy Director. “Ministers should stand firm and reject Parliament's unhealthy proposal, which seems keener to protect poorly-performing businesses and countries than people's health. Environment ministers have a prime opportunity to halt this policy decline and demonstrate that they care about people.”

EEB's detailed demands on Air Quality and the other items on the Council's agenda, including Natural Resource Use Strategy and Marine Environment Framework Directive, can be found at: www.eeb.org/activities/General/20061004-EEB-Letter-to-Environment-Council-23Oct06.pdf