Air Pollution: commission takes further legal action against 9 member states - Ewa Hedlund & Lone Mikkelsen

The European Commission is taking wide-ranging legal action to ensure that Member States comply with EU legislation aimed at improving air quality in the European Union. Its action is aimed at Belgium, Italy, Greece, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria and Spain. Cases relate to 7 separate EU laws on air quality, each of which is aimed at preventing or reducing the harmful effects of air pollution on public health and the environment. Primarily, the proceedings relate to the failure of Member States to adopt, by the agreed deadlines, national measures implementing these EU laws. The legislation that has not been implemented in time concerns the incineration of waste, air quality limit values for benzene and carbon monoxide, national emission ceilings for sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and ammonia and large combustion plants. The Commission has also taken legal action to ensure compliance with the reporting requirements imposed by EU air pollution legislation as well as by the Regulation which aims to protect the ozone layer. Commenting on the decisions, Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström said: "I urge Member States to speed up their implementation of EU laws on air pollution. Delays put people at greater risk of suffering health problems associated with poor air quality."

Incineration of Waste

The Directive on the incineration of waste1 aims to prevent or limit the negative effects that the incineration and co-incineration of waste have on the environment and to limit the resulting risks to human health. It imposes stringent operational and technical requirements and sets emission limit values for waste incineration and co-incineration plants within the EU. The deadline for transposing this Directive into national law was 28 December 2002. As Belgium, Italy, Greece and Portugal have still not complied, the Commission has decided to refer them to the Court of Justice. It has also sent the Netherlands a final written warning, as the Dutch legislation is still incomplete.