Driving bans: EU lowers pollutant limits
In an effort to improve the air in Europe, the limits for pollutants in the air have been lowered. However, they still do not come close to the WHO limits. But the new values could also lead to new environmental zones, driving bans and restrictions in the EU.
Last year, the World Health Organisation also massively lowered its limit values: for particulate matter PM10 and particulate matter PM2.5, only 5 and 15 micrograms per cubic metre, respectively, now apply. The limit value for nitrogen dioxide was even lowered at once from 40 to 10 micrograms per cubic metre. Europe was still far away from this, where 40 micrograms of nitrogen dioxide per cubic metre still applied. Yesterday, new limit values were also proposed in Europe, namely for twelve air pollutants. The limit values for nitrogen in the EU were halved, for PM10 from 40 to 20, for PM2.5 from 25 to 10 micrograms per cubic metre.
But it will be quite a while before these limits actually apply. They are not to be bindingly taken into account until 2030. The bad thing about this is that pollutants in the lungs of many people will continue to shorten their lives over the next eight years. In addition, the pressure to lower the limits has been intensified by the massive use of coal as a substitute for gas, which is being burned less and less. The Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) has therefore already made proposals to comply with the limit values, such as a speed limit of 80 km/h on motorways. The good thing about the long wait until 2030 is that the countries of the EU have enough time to think up and design suitable measures to get the air clean. How the individual countries comply with this limit, however, is up to them. It could therefore be that new driving bans will now be imposed on motorists. In this context, the federal government refers to the cities, because only the municipalities can impose driving bans in Germany. However, in order to achieve the targeted limit values, there is hardly any way around restricting the entry of diesel vehicles. Planned relaxations and abolitions of environmental zones could also be off the table with the new limit values, since the zones would have to be reintroduced later, in 2030 at the latest. If there are driving bans to reduce diesel emissions, the ban on the sale of internal combustion vehicles from 2035 in Europe will also come almost too late, because with an internal combustion vehicle you could then only drive outside the environmental zones anyway and would have to change to a clean means of transport to get into the city centre.
You can find out when and if there will actually be new driving bans in the rest of Europe here and in the Green-Zones app.