Member States can be held liable for health damage resulting from excessively high air pollution, according to the opinion of Advocate General Juliane Kokott delivered on Thursday 5 May (Case C-61/21).
A Paris resident is claiming €21 million in compensation from the French State because, he claims, the increasing air pollution in that agglomeration has damaged his health.
For the Advocate General (https://aeur.eu/f/1iv ), an infringement of the limit values for the protection of air quality under EU law may give rise to entitlement to compensation from the State. According to her, the three classic conditions for State liability apply to damage suffered by an individual as a result of violations of EU law attributable to the State.
The first condition is satisfied since the limit values for pollutants in ambient air and the obligations to improve air quality laid down by EU directives were intended to confer rights on individuals.
As regards whether there is a serious breach of the rules on air quality protection, this concerns all periods during which the respective applicable limit values were exceeded without there having been an air quality improvement plan that did not contain any manifest defects.
The actual difficulties in enforcing claims for compensation lie in the third condition, namely in proving a direct causal link between the serious breach of the rules on air quality and specific damage to health.
The Advocate General concludes that, if the proof of a direct link between a serious violation of the limit values and health damage is established, the matter would not end there. The country can avoid liability by demonstrating that such exceedance of the limit values would also have occurred if it had adopted in good time air quality plans which satisfy the requirements of the directive. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)