The European Commission has taken the EU Ambient Air Quality Directive as one of its priorities, with a clear message from President Junker (1). In line with this, a fitness check of the two EU Ambient Air Quality (AAQ) Directives (Directives 2008/50/EC and 2004/107/EC) has been initiated.

These Directives set air quality standards and requirements to ensure that Member States monitor and/or assess air quality in their territory, in an harmonized and comparable manner.

The second stakeholder workshop of the Clean Air Fitness check took place in Brussels on January 15, presenting the preliminary findings of the evaluation to stakeholders, following the first stakeholder workshop that assisted in gathering evidence for undertaking the fitness check. In line with the Commission's general principles and standards, a range of consultation tools have been used to collect the views of a range of stakeholders. During the workshop, the emerging findings were presented and discussed while receiving final feedback from stakeholders to assist in the completion of the evaluation.

The Conference in Brussels organized by DG ENV, counted also with DG Regio, DG Health and the attendance of WHO as a very relevant stakeholder.

During the Conference, Mr. Martin Seychell, Deputy Director General for Health, pointed out how the polluted air risks are a major health  and  environmental  concern  for  EU  citizens.  Despite improvements over the last decade, a substantial share of the EU population continues to be exposed  to  air  pollution  at  levels  deemed  unhealthy  by  scientific  standards,  especially  in cities. See Copernicus air quality index by city https://www.euronews.com/weather

As a strong  initial statement, Mr Syechel stated that air pollution is still the number one cause of premature death in Europe, with more than 400. 000 people dying prematurely in the E.U every year due to bad air quality and, millions of Europeans suffering from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases caused by air pollution. It is striking that in Europe, premature deaths from air pollution are 15 times higher approximately than the fatalities from road traffic accidents. In 2015 all forms of pollution combined were responsible for 21 percent of all deaths from cardiovascular disease, 26 percent of threats from the scheme car disease, 23 percent of the stroke, 51 percent of deaths due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and 43 percent of lung cancer.

European air quality standards are currently not met in more than 130 European cities, that's practically most of the major urban areas in Europe ( which are increasing centers of population) and they are exposed to concentration of polluted air above the European limit values (more than 8 out of 10) to levels which exceed the values recommended by the guidelines of the World Health Organization. Of course, there is a social dimension to this, because it is generally the populations in poorer regions that are the most heavily affected and, this adds yet another layer of inequalities to a lot of other issues that this same people have to face.

It is therefore the moment now to accelerate a collective response because this is not just a local issue. Air pollution disperses globally and airborne pollution and pollutants travel across national boundaries continents and even oceans. We need high quality metrics of pollution monitoring and tracking progress towards national and local pollution prevention and disease control goals, All this is essential to the success of any health and, pollution control plan and early establishment for public health, and environment monitoring systems should be a priority. The regime from the 3rd U.N. high level meeting on non-communicable diseases in fact recognized that pollution is one of the new priority topics.

The new commission expert group, the steering group on health promotion disease prevention and management in cities try to help member states guide actions and select priorities. They have established a new best practice portal to bring together all the best practices and allow all stakeholders to submit their practices for evaluation, being open to colleagues from all around the world to use it.

DG Health is now addressing non-communicable diseases in a more holistic manner than before, needing a much stronger focus on health promotion and disease prevention. The sustainable development goals is a perfect platform interlinked with socio economic development , environmental protection, health and wellbeing. This framework provides overall support for tackling health determinants, as relevant policies are being defined in a preventative and sustainable way.

The World Health Organization is increasingly focusing international attention on this important challenge, including the 1st Global Conference on Air Pollution and Health which took place last November in Geneva and the World Health Organization Executive Board, focusing on policy options and cost effective interventions.

Mr. Daniel Calleja, Director General, DG ENV  pointed out the  crucial importance of improving the quality of life of EU citizens in this particular area and, how the environmental policy can be a  social equalizer. He stressed the idea that there can not be different rights for citizens depending on where they live, all citizens are entitled to the highest levels of clean air. Mr Calleja stressed the need of environment, health and safety standards for all countries and, though this is something which falls upon the responsibility of the member states, the European Commission needs to ensure that the environmental quality of life standards are a priority. During his speech he also stressed the number of premature deaths due to pollution also costing billions of euros to EU health systems and to EU economy. At times it’s important to look at the number of days lost, the lack of productivity, the costs to the health service, to understand  that, by respecting the environment with a higher quality legislation, actually this traumatic figure of deaths could decrease and actually improve not only the quality of life but save lives in Europe. Today it’s clear and nobody challenges the indisputable harmful effects of pollution.

Mr. Marc Lemaître, Director General, DG REGIO admitted how air pollution requires a strategic orientation  and a long term investment. He stressed the idea that, ultimately, once the priorities have been agreed between member states and Commission, they need  to decide on individual projects with a special focus on sustainability. He also stressed the idea that there is a need to find policy objectives with a sustainable development focus.

ECF attended the event and expressed the convenience of taking into account the impact of cycling and e-bikes in EU cities, as one of the solutions to decrease the level of contamination in the air.  ECF has been campaigning in 2018 with our ECF members addressing EU Environment Ministers and the Commission DG Env to improve the level of clean air in Europe.   (2) (3)

References

(1)        https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/clean_air_for_all_factsheet.pdf

(2)          https://ecf.com/news-and-events/news/european-commission-takes-6-eu-memb...

(3)          https://ecf.com/news-and-events/news/eu-transport-environment-ministers-...