“A regression on air quality. » Nearly a dozen large European cities, including Paris, Rome and Brussels, submitted a petition to the European Parliament on Monday to demand more demanding standards “on the quality of air and emissions from motor vehicles”. The petition consulted by AFP is submitted while a new regulation voted by the 27 on the exhaust gases of passenger cars must be negotiated with the European Parliament which has still not defined its position.
Member States have ruled out (led in particular by France and Italy) a tightening of the standards in force, believing that it would risk slowing down manufacturers’ investments in electric vehicles. They thus favored a less strict path than the proposal formulated by the European Commission in November 2022, which intended to significantly reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide (NOx) and fine particles from vehicles.
Anne Hidalgo at the helm
Rome, Brussels, Zagreb and Krizevci (Croatia) as well as Bordeaux, Montpellier, Besançon and the metropolis of Lyon signed the petition initiated by the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo (PS). “We, representatives of large European cities which concentrate 75% of the European population, cannot accept such a democratic denial and such a scandal”, they claim in the petition, pleading for “an ambitious standard, aligned with those set by the ‘WHO’.
This text on the Euro 7 standard, a European emissions standard aimed at reducing pollution caused by traffic, must apply from 2025 to replace Euro 6 and makes it possible to classify all passenger vehicles and heavy goods vehicles, regardless of whatever their type of engine, depending on their level of pollutant emissions.
“Rather than forcing these (automotive) manufacturers to align with an ambitious standard, Europe is preparing to align itself with their demands and their interests,” believe the signatory mayors, predicting that “give up to tighten the standard today would condemn us to suffer the emissions of these vehicles until 2050.”
“If it were to be adopted, the Euro 7 standard would grant a license to pollute and therefore to kill by freeing itself from WHO standards and this would be the new public health scandal on a European scale,” they assert.
Every year, air pollution is responsible for 70,000 deaths in the EU.