Mon 17 October 2022:
The Council of State, France’s highest administrative court, has ordered the government to pay millions of euros in fines for poor air quality in French cities.
According to the court’s statement on Monday, the government did not do enough to ensure good air quality.
The sanction comes after a first 10 million euros fine back in 2021, and five years after the Conseil d’Etat, which acts as a legal adviser to the executive and as the supreme court for administrative justice, ordered the government to reduce levels of nitrogen dioxide and fine particles in more than a dozen zones to comply with European standards.
“To this day, the measures undertaken by the state don’t guarantee that air quality improves enough to respect pollution thresholds as quickly as possible,” the Conseil d’Etat said in a statement. It said the money would go to environmental groups which brought the case.
It went on to say that, despite some progress, four cities remained particularly vulnerable: Toulouse, Paris, Lyon, and Aix-Marseille. France is one of several European Union members that the EU’s top court has found to be in violation of the bloc’s air quality standards in recent years.
According to Brussels, air pollution causes more than 400,000 premature deaths in Europe each year, and the EU has been urging EU members to comply while also taking legal action against those who break the rules.
Next year, the Council of State will again review air quality in France.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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