The Parliament and EU Council still have some work to do to reach agreement on the proposed revision of the directives on ambient air quality to bring the limit values for each air pollutant more into line with WHO recommendations (see EUROPE 13051/1).
The third session of interinstitutional negotiations (trilogue), held on the evening of Tuesday 23 January, focused on short-term action plans (article 20), articles 8 (assessment criteria), 9 (sampling points), 10 (monitoring supersites) and 15 (exceeding alert or information thresholds) (see EUROPE 13332/2).
In three hours of discussions, some limited progress was made, for example on articles 9 and 10, thanks to concessions from the Parliament, which agreed to drop its demand for a monitoring supersite for every 2 million inhabitants and, like the Council, to stick to the Commission’s proposal. However, the Parliament wants to introduce obligations for Member States to monitor substances such as black carbon or the deposition of heavy metals or aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) - which the Council sees as an administrative and financial burden.
On article 20, although there were some steps forward, the two positions are still far apart. The Council maintains that the development of short-term action plans in situations where there are no effective measures that can be implemented in the short term for fine particulate matter (PM ) pollution is unnecessary and would impose an unnecessary additional burden on Member States. The Parliament, for its part, considers that action plans to rectify the situation if alert thresholds are exceeded are the bare minimum to protect public health. Its compromise proposals still have to be reviewed by the delegations.
Negotiations at technical level will still be required to reach agreement. The date for the fourth trilogue, which was scheduled for mid-February, has not yet been set. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)