Air pollution: ozone in ambient air, emission ceilings

The amended proposal for a Directive relating to ozone in ambient air both accepts and rejects a number of amendments tabled by the European Parliament. The amendments accepted by the Commission relate to the following: - coordination between Member States and involvement of accession candidate countries; - information and reporting obligations; - environmental and human health protection. The amendments rejected by the Commission are in relation to the following: - the involvement of accession candidate countries in developing a strategy to abate ozone pollution; - the setting of 2020 as a fixed target year to achieve the long-term objectives; - the term "as far as possible" from the table in Annex I (II); - the term "where practicable" from the requirement of Article 6(2) to inform the public on predicted exceedances of the information or alert threshold; - the requirement that short-term action plans be drawn up on a local scale.�