European Union Carbon Market Glossary
Ambient Air Quality (AAQ)
- Category: European Union Carbon Market Glossary
To address air pollution, the EU has two ambient air quality directives, dating from 2004 and 2008. The two complementary EU Ambient Air Quality (AAQ) Directives are the Directives 2008/50/EC and and the Directive 2004/107/EC. These Directives set air quality standards and requirements to ensure that European Member States adequately monitor and/or assess air quality on their territory, in a harmonised and comparable manner. The corresponding implementing decisions are:
- the Implementing Decision 2011/850/EC, and
- the Commission Directive EU/2015/1480.
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The revision of those directives was put forward by the European Commission in October 2022, as an integral part of the EU’s zero pollution action plan in the framework of the European Green Deal. Under this action plan, the Commission committed to revising the EU's air quality standards to align them more closely with the WHO’s recommendations.
The Commission proposal updates and merges the two existing directives and introduces the zero-pollution objective for air, to be achieved by 2050. The Commission proposal also sets interim 2030 targets that are closer to WHO guidelines. According to the initial proposal, the standards set will be regularly reviewed until 2050, to assess whether they need to be adapted or whether other pollutants also need to be covered. The proposal also aims to strengthen air quality monitoring, modelling and plans.
The European Parliament adopted its position in September 2023.
The proposed directive sets out provisions to ensure access to justice for those who have a sufficient interest and want to challenge its implementation, including environmental NGOs. Any judicial review procedure should be fair, timely and not prohibitively expensive.
Under the new rules, member states would have to ensure that people are entitled to claim and obtain compensation where damage to their health has occurred as a result of an intentional or negligent violation of the national rules transposing certain provisions of the directive.
The Council adopted its position in November 2023. The proposal as amended by the Council also requires member states to establish effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties for those who infringe the measures adopted to implement the directive. Such penalties would have to take into account the severity and duration of the infringement, whether it is recurrent, and the people and environment affected by it.
Existing AAQ Directives set air quality standards i.e. maximum pollutant concentration levels for key air pollutants that have a significant bearing on human health and ecosystem services (notably vegetation including crops) and that are to be attained across the EU territory. As such, they are part of a three-pronged EU Clean Air policy framework aimed at protecting citizens across the European Union from significant adverse impacts; by which:
(a) ambient air quality standards are established for twelve key air pollutants deemed to be most relevant; i.e. sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and nitrogen oxides, particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5), ozone, benzene, lead, carbon monoxide, arsenic, cadmium, nickel, and benzo(a)pyrene i.e. via the AAQ Directives;
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European Commission website - Review of the EU Air policy
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Links(b) national emission limits for the most important trans-boundary air pollutants (set via Directive on National Emission Ceilings, which has been recently revised to include 2020 and 2030 targets) are expected to put concentrations on a downward trend and closer to air quality standards; and
(c) emission standards for key pollution sources are established e.g. via legislation on fuel quality, vehicle emissions, industrial emissions, etc.
The AAQ Directives are guided by a need to reduce air pollution to levels which minimise harmful effects on human health, paying particular attention to sensitive populations, and the environment as a whole, to improve the monitoring and assessment of air quality and to provide information to the public.
Specifically, the Directives set common methods and criteria to assess air quality in all Member States in a comparable and reliable manner. Member States then designate zones and agglomerations throughout their territory and classify them according to prescribed assessment thresholds and provide air quality assessments underpinned by measurement, modelling and/or objective estimation, or a combination of these.
Furthermore the Directives define and establish standards for ambient air quality for key air pollutants to be attained by all Member States across their territories against timelines laid out in the Directives.
Where the established standards for ambient air quality are not met, the Directives require Member States to prepare and implement air quality plans and measures (for a given pollutant). Guided by the principle of subsidiarity, the Directives leave the choice of means to achieve these standards to the Member States, but do explicitly require that exceedance periods are kept as short as possible.
Member States are required to report 'up to date' air quality measurements, the results of air quality assessment on an annual basis, as well as information on the plans and programmes they establish in a harmonized manner – both to the Commission as well as to stakeholders and the general public.
It is the explicit responsibility of Member States to assess ambient air quality, approve the measurement systems required, ensure the accuracy of measurements, analyse the assessment methods used, coordinate related quality assurance programmes and cooperate with other Member States and the Commission.
Regulatory chronicle
9 November 2023
Council ready to start talks with Parliament on new rules to strengthen standards in the EU
26 October 2022
26 July 2017 - 23 August 2017
Fitness check of the EU Ambient Air Quality Directives
Documentation
European air quality report 2016
WHO - Air quality guidelines (global update 2005)
WHO - Health risks of air pollution in Europe: HRAPIE project
WHO - Review of evidence on health aspects of air pollution: REVIHAAP project
UNECE - Trends in Ecosystem and health responses to long-range transported atmospheric pollutants