Summary of the day
Politicians across Europe have a moral responsibility to urgently tackle the continent’s dangerously polluted air, according to Maria Neira, the director of the World Health Organization’s department of environment, climate change and health.
Kaja Shukova, North Macedonia’s environment minister, said that “air pollution is a problem that we work on continuously and for which there are no quick solutions”.
Adjusting European standards to the World Health Organization’s guidelines on air quality “will be a difficult debate,” the Bulgarian environment minister, Julian Popov, said.
Estonia’s minister of climate, Kristen Michal, said “it is very worrying that the fine particle pollution is so prevalent”.
Europe has a “credible plan” to reach new air quality targets, said Pascal Canfin, chair of the European parliament’s environment committee.
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Norbert Lins, a member of the European parliament from Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, stressed that the World Health Organization has “guidelines and not limit values for the emissions and air pollutants”.
Lins, who has been working on air quality issues in the parliament on behalf of the centre-right European People’s party, said in a statement that “only when someone is constantly exposed to such high emissions, eg standing on a street side for hours straight, then we can talk about real danger”.
The German politician added that “currently it is also very hard to compare the values we have, since the sampling points are not placed in a harmonised way throughout Europe,” noting that he has been “fighting for a more aligned method”.
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