Air pollution: ozone in ambient air, emission ceilings

PURPOSE: This proposal seeks to amend existing Community legislation regarding ozone in line with the requirements of Council Directive 96/62/EC on ambient air quality assessment and management (Air Quality Framework Directive). CONTENT: The Air Quality Framework Directive requires daughter legislation to include the following provisions: - limit values and /or target values, including dates for their attainment; - alert thresholds if appropriate and minimum details to be supplied in the event of exceedances; - criteria and techniques for measurement and other methods for assessing ambient air quality. Recognising that compliance with the long-term objective cannot be achieved in one step, the Commission has adopted a staged approach in this proposal. 1) The proposal explicitly includes the WHO Guidelines for ozone as long term objectives. The ultimate aim os to avoid exceedances of these long term objectives, but no date is set by which this should be achieved. 2) As an interim first stage, the proposal sets target values for 2010. These are based on WHO Guidelines with a view to reducing harmful effects on human health and the environment as quickly as possible over the medium term, but also taking into account of feasibility and cost. The fact that the Commission used the results of the scenario analysis performed by its consultant to derive the proposed target values provides consistency between the latter and the interim objectives underpinning the NEC proposal (and thus the expected effect of the emission ceiling proposed in the ozone strategy). 3) The Commission will review the implementation of this Directive in due course and consider whether further progress could be made towards meeting the long-term objectives.�