BRUSSELS, The European Parliament today adopted its position on a revised law to improve air quality in the EU in order to achieve a clean and healthy environment for European citizens.
363 MEPs voted in favour, 226 against and 46 abstained on the vote which sets a stricter 2035 limit and target values for several pollutants including particulate matter (PM2.5, PM10), NO2 (nitrogen dioxide), SO2 (sulphur dioxide) and O3 (ozone). The new rules would ensure air quality in the EU is not harmful to human health, natural ecosystems and biodiversity and would align EU rules with the most recent World Health Organization (WHO) Air Quality Guidelines. MEPs also stress that the air quality standards proposed by the Commission should be an intermediate objective to be reached as soon as possible, and by 2030 at the latest.
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). In locations where high ultrafine particles (UFP), black carbon, mercury and ammonia (N) concentrations are likely to occur, there should be one sampling point per one million inhabitants, higher than the Commission’s originally proposed one per five million and then only for UFP.
MEPs propose that 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.
Tariq Al Fahaam
Source: Emirates News Agency