MEPs urge UK to honour new EU deal to halve deaths from air pollution

A post-Brexit UK government should respect a new EU deal designed to halve the number of premature deaths from air pollution, MEPs have said.

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The draft directive agreed on Thursday sets national limits for emissions from five pollutants by 2030: sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC), ammonia (NH3) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5).

Liberal MEP Catherine Bearder, said: “This agreement to cut deadly air pollution will save thousands of lives throughout Europe every year. The UK government must still commit to meeting these targets no matter what happens in the coming years. Brexit cannot be used as an excuse to water down environmental laws and become the dirty man of Europe again.”

The UK was a key player in drafting the law, arguing for less ambition on health improvements, the omission of methane from its remit and smaller cuts in ammonia emissions, despite contrary advice from a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) study.

British concerns about the “high costs” of the NOx and particulate matter curbs, and the effect of ammonia emissions limits on a planned 500,000 increase in cattle numbers by 2025, were flagged in one Defra document seen by the Guardian.

The proposed new pollution curbs would also force the UK to cut emissions of SO2 by 78%, NOx by 62%, and PM2.5 by 46%, all by 2030.

The vast majority of the improvements would come from greener transport, with industry and agriculture also shouldering a hefty share of the National Emissions Ceiling directive’s (NEC) costs.

The EU’s environment commissioner, Karmenu Vella said: “Air pollution is the number one environmental cause of death in the EU, leading to over 400,000 premature deaths each year. The agreement reached today will cut those impacts by half over the coming years. It will also deliver direct savings to the economy from fewer lost working days and lower healthcare costs and stimulate investments in new technologies and green growth.”

Campaign groups were critical though, with the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) describing the compromise agreement as “weak” and accusing EU states of “putting industry and agriculture’s interests before people’s health”.

EEB research predicts almost 10,000 extra premature deaths a year in Britain by 2030 because of the diminution of pollutant caps contained in the commission’s original proposal.

The group also denounced the inclusion of several “flexibilities”, which it said would make the limits “much more difficult to enforce”.

Alan Andrews, a lawyer for the ClientEarth environmental consultancy, hailed the agreement as a “crucial step forward”, and argued that the negotiations “perfectly demonstrated the importance of Britain’s membership of the EU”.

“In a future outside the EU, we will lose influence over these kinds of laws, and risk a return to our historical role as the dirty old man of Europe,” he warned.

But Andrews also echoed the EEB’s concerns that the proposals were “nowhere near strong enough”. By aiming to reduce the health impacts of air pollution by “around 50%”, the draft law was “leaving half of the problem unsolved,” he said.

The national emissions ceilings that the directive sets for each pollutant from 2020 to 2029 are the the same as those that EU member states are already committed to under the Gothenburg protocol.

The European Parliament is expected to vote on the NEC directive in the autumn.