In this episode we talk about air pollution, the biggest environmental risk to health in the European Union. The Ambient Air Quality Directive has just been revised with stricter limits, but some member states may ask to postpone it under the pretext of protecting economic activity.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Air pollution is the biggest environmental health risk in the European Union.
00:18Pollutant levels are above the guidelines set by the World Health Organization.
00:23In response, the EU has revised its Ambient Air Quality Directive with stricter limits
00:29to be set from 2030.
00:32But some Member States may use the right to delay the process up to a decade in order
00:37to protect economic activity.
00:40On Unicode we will decipher this reform for you.
00:44Around 300,000 Europeans die prematurely every year due to air pollution.
00:50It's a major cause of several diseases including asthma, lung cancer, stroke and diabetes.
00:57To reverse this, the Directive sets new limits for half a dozen major pollutants by 2030.
01:03For example, the microscopic particles known as PM2.5 should decrease from 25 to 10 micrograms
01:09per cubic meter, and in the case of nitrogen dioxide, from 40 to 20 micrograms per cubic
01:15meter.
01:16The European Commission acknowledges that air pollution affects vulnerable people the
01:21most.
01:22We are talking about children, the elderly, the sick and the least wealthy.
01:26Let's see if the European citizens are aware of this reality.
02:16I will now talk with Robert Hodgson who will cover this topic for Euronews.
02:41Hello Robert.
02:42Hello.
02:43So, why was it important to revise this Directive and what should change in air quality standards?
02:50In 2021 the World Health Organization made much more stringent its own recommendations
02:55on health pollution limits, so in 2022 the EU followed up with its own proposal and this
03:02month they've adopted more stringent limits of their own, but they're not as stringent
03:07as the World Health Organization's.
03:10And even so, some member states might want to delay, to postpone the implementation of
03:17the Directive.
03:18Why would they want that and which conditions should be met in order to do so?
03:23Well it's been a problem for years that member states of the EU have had great difficulty
03:28even complying with the existing regulations.
03:31More than half of them have been sent to court for breaches of the existing emissions pollution
03:36standards.
03:38So in the end, in order to get the legislation adopted, there's a clause whereby countries
03:43can demand a 10 year delay, but Germany wanted specifically to have driving bans and the
03:50shuttering of factories excluded from this.
03:53And finally, a key issue in this revision of the Directive is the access of citizens
03:59to justice when they have been harmed by this problem.
04:04What is at stake?
04:05Well the Directive allows non-governmental groups to scrutinize the plans of governments
04:11to put in place the limits that the Directive demands.
04:17It also gives citizens access to the courts.
04:21It actually specifies explicitly that if someone's health is harmed because the government hasn't
04:26or a company has caused pollution, then they're entitled to sue for financial compensation.
04:33Let's now see some more relevant facts and figures.
04:37Energy production, agriculture and industry are the activities that most contribute to
04:43air pollution, though in urban areas traffic is a major source.
04:48The Environment Agency ranks cities in Sweden, Finland and Estonia as the cleanest.
04:54The most polluted though are in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and Italy.
04:59In the rest of the EU, the air quality is fair or moderate.
05:03On our decoding journey, I will speak now to the European Parliament rapporteur for
05:08this file.
05:09The 27 Member States will have now two years to transpose the Directive into national law.
05:16Are you concerned that some countries are arguing that this might have a potential harm
05:22to the economic activity?
05:25This will be a process, a process that the EU has to accompany to support the local,
05:29regional and member states, authorities, obviously.
05:34But to be honest, pollution is a slow-motion pandemic.
05:37We saw what we were able to do in front of a pandemic.
05:41Nobody was asking about the economy.
05:45It was a health crisis and we addressed it and this is what we are going to do.
05:50This resolution somehow suggests that the Green Deal is a big and important priority
05:56for the European Union, but somehow does it have to be calibrated to face competition
06:02from the United States, from China, other regions?
06:06Of course, but the problem here is that we are not confronting competitiveness with the
06:12Green Agenda.
06:13This is, I think, the wrong approach.
06:16To move on the Green Agenda is to build the competitiveness of tomorrow, because we know
06:21that green technology, green technology on mobility, green technology on energy, on buildings,
06:27on efficiency, it will be our competitiveness tomorrow and our model of prosperity.
06:33What is happening with China, for example, that we finally have tariffs to their cars?
06:39The problem is that they were going more fast than us.
06:43Finally, the current parliament is a bit more polarised and there are a lot of political
06:49sectors more aligned now with the interests of agriculture, industry, that emit a lot
06:56of polluting gases.
06:59Aligning these two interests will be the biggest battle for the parliament.
07:02We will have a lot of discussions about this, but this discussion is well deserved, I would
07:07say.
07:08It will be the biggest transformation since the Industrial Revolution.
07:13This is what we are doing, decarbonising our economies.
07:16The primary sector is an important sector for our economy, but also to managing our
07:23territory and it has to be protected, but at the same time it has to be transformed
07:28as all the sectors of our economy.
07:30This directive is essential for the EU to meet its target of zero pollution by 2050.
07:37After all, air pollution is also harmful to rivers, oceans, crops, forests and ecosystem.
07:44These are crucial resources for a sustainable economy, so the virtue will be in finding
07:50the balance between all these interests.
07:53Thanks for watching and don't miss next week's programme for more decoding on European policies.