Last month the European Parliament voted on the National Emissions Ceilings Directive (NEC), a piece of legislation that sets maximum pollution limits for 5 main pollutants. You can read more on the outcomes of the vote here.
On Wednesday 16th December, the draft NEC text was discussed by the Environment Council (composed of the Ministers of Environment of the 28 EU Member States). Clean air is essential for healthy people, yet at this meeting Ministers adopted a text that will allow levels of polluting our air in ways that will harm people’s health.
Despite a strong steer from the European Parliament earlier this year, national Ministers opted to water down this text thereby allowing emissions from harmful pollutants to continue to be churned out in dangerously high amounts. The Council position weakens the ambition level from the Commission proposal that would reduce premature mortality by 2030 by 52% to 48% - just six percentage points more than what should be achieved under current legislation. It also supports removing methane entirely and contains a series of exemptions making the limits to be put in place at best unenforceable and at worst meaningless.
These concessions will have high costs for Europeans, resulting in thousands of premature deaths, illnesses, allergies and other health impacts, as well as damage to Europe’s environment.
EFA along with an alliance of health charities has actively campaigned on this issue for some time. Ahead of the 16 December Environment Council meeting EFA, along with 16 health organisations, signed a letter containing recommendations to Environment and Health Ministers for ambitious EU action that will benefit people’s health, the environment and the economy. We outlined our recommendations, supported by evidence illustrating the impact of poor air quality on health and the urgent need for action and maintaining an ambitious NEC Directive.
This is not the final word on the issue; the trialogue negotiations between the Council, the Parliament and the Commission can still overturn this lack of ambition and reintroduce strong air pollution targets. EFA and our partners will continue to actively campaign in the fight against air pollution and put people’s health first.
We are waiting to see the final text and will communicate it to you when we have received it.
Further information:
The National Emissions Ceilings (NEC) Directive sets limits to the amount of pollution every EU country can emit on a yearly basis. Currently, the EU is looking at setting new caps for 2020, 2025 and 2030 for fine particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen oxide (NOx), sulphur dioxide (SO2), volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs), ammonia (NH3) and methane (CH4). The European Parliament broadly backed the European Commission’s proposal in a plenary vote on 28 October. Negotiations between the Parliament and Council are expected to start under the Dutch Presidency in 2016.
Air pollution continues to cause hundreds of thousands of premature deaths in the EU every year, as well as significant damage to nature, crops and buildings. (See 2015 EEA air qualityreport).