The Thematic Strategy on Air Pollution— under the microscope

The European Commission adopted its ‘Thematic Strategy on Air Pollution’ (TSAP) in September 2005. This was the culmination of more than three years’ work undertaken in the Clean Air For Europe (CAFE) Programme. Since that time the other European Institutions have been scrutinising the strategy. In particular the EU Parliament (EP) recently indicated that, while they welcome the TSAP, they consider the targets are not ambitious enough.

Table 1 shows the resulting 2020 emission levels in EU-25 for the five pollutants targeted by the CAFE programme/TSAP for ‘2020 CLE’, the TSAP and those proposed by the EP. The small emission reduction increments between the TSAP and the EP ‘more ambitious’ targets should be seen in the light of the substantial increase in attendant costs to EU-25 from the € 7.1 billion/year of the TSAP to the € 11 billion/year estimated by the EP.