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.
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