Air Quality: Revision of EU Rules – Stakeholder Meeting

Clean air is essential for our health and that of the environment. To this end, the EU sets standards to avoid the build-up of excessive pollution concentrations. As part of the European Green Deal, the EU is revising these standards, to align them more closely with the recommendations of the World Health Organization (the latest Air Quality Guidelines of the WHO have been published on 22 September 2021). The EU also aims to improve overall EU legislation for clean air, building on the lessons learnt from the 2019 evaluation (‘fitness check’) of the Ambient Air Quality Directives.

The objective of the initiative is to further enhance the EU air quality legislation to avoid, prevent or reduce the harmful effects of air pollution on human health and the environment, in line with the European Green Deal’s zero pollution ambition. The Commission has published an Inception Impact Assessment , to guide the underpinning work to assess the impacts of a possible revision of the Ambient Air Quality Directives, planned for 2022.