EU Parliament adopts revisions to the Ambient Air Quality Directives
14 September 2023
The European Parliament adopted its position on revisions to the Ambient Air Quality Directives (AAQD) that set stricter 2035 limit and target values for several ambient air pollutants including PM2.5, PM10, NO2, SO2, and O3.
363 MEPs voted in favor, 226 against, and 46 abstained on the vote. The Parliament will now start negotiations with the European Council on the final shape of the law.
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The new rules would align EU air quality standards with the most recent (2021) World Health Organization (WHO) Air Quality Guidelines. They are also intended to help achieve the zero pollution objective by 2050 in line with the EU Zero Pollution Action Plan.
In October 2022, the EU Commission proposed a revision of the EU air quality rules with more ambitious targets for 2030. The text adopted by the Parliament strengthens the air quality standards beyond the Commission’s proposal. It includes two sets of limit and target values: (1) intermediate limit values effective from 2030, based on the Commission’s proposal, and (2) more stringent, final limit values effective from 2035.
One of the key provisions of the revised standards is a tighter annual limit value for PM2.5 of 10 µg/m3 from 2030, and 5 µg/m3 from 2035, down from the current limit of 25 µg/m3. A number of other limit values are also strengthened, including those for NO2, SO2, benzene, benzo(a)pyrene, and several heavy metals.
The adopted text introduces several additional provisions, including:
- More air-quality sampling points—The text underlines the need to increase the number of air quality sampling points. In urban areas, there should be at least one monitoring supersite per two million inhabitants that represents the exposure of the general urban population (the Commission proposed one per 10 million).
- Better protection of citizens—MEPs want to harmonize currently fragmented and unintuitive air quality indices across the EU. Indices must be comparable, clear and publicly available, with hourly updates.
- Legal right to compensation—MEPs want citizens whose health is damaged to have a stronger right to compensation when the new rules are infringed.
- Air quality plans and roadmaps—In addition to air quality plans, which are required when EU countries exceed limits, all member states would also have to create air quality roadmaps that set out short- and long-term measures in order to comply with the new limit values.
Source: EU Parliament