Brussels, 13/10/2014 (Agence Europe) - With 17 members states in breach of EU legislation on air quality, insufficient progress has been made to reduce atmospheric pollution, and the revised EU strategy in this area “will take two generations before people can breathe genuinely clean air”, the CoR warns. Following their rapporteur, Cor Lamers (EPP, Netherlands), the local and regional authorities of the EU called, on Friday 10 October, for a realistic and pragmatic strategy to provide the cities and regions which are struggling with more help and lay down new binding objectives to reduce pollutant emissions by 2015 as a stage towards the 2030 targets.
The CoR was taking position on the Pure Air in Europe legislative package presented by the European Commission in December 2013 and which the Italian Presidency is to make a priority of its mandate in the field of the environment. This package includes: - the new proposed directive aiming to reduce sulphur dioxide and micro-particle pollution from small and medium-sized industrial installations; - the draft revised directive on national emissions ceilings (NEC) setting stricter upper limits for the six main pollutants between now and 2015, to be complied with by 2030, and bringing in provisions for methane and ammonia.
The CoR takes the view that something is not right in an EU strategy which starts legal proceedings against member states whose citizen regions are not complying with EU air quality standards when, the institution argues, the Commission's policy has failed to tackle pollution at source and lacks ambition in setting targets to reduce pollutants, particularly those released at source.
It therefore calls for more support in the future for regions and cities which are struggling to respect the upper limits for pollutant concentration in the air, through the structural funds and the member states' action plans, and that they be given time to comply with the legislation.
“The European Commission must show a degree of restraint when it comes to launching legal proceedings and instead provide a more realistic set of enforcement tools”, Cor Lamers stresses. In order to do this, the EU should establish new binding interim targets for 2025, so as to guarantee that the member states are on the right track to achieve their 2030 targets. This new interim goal would provide a new stage of performance verification, by requiring the member states to start to reduce their harmful emissions in good time. (AN)