The "victory" of the Po Valley regions over the EU:they could be full of smog until 2040

On Tuesday 20 February the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament reached a agreement to impose more stringent limits on air quality, with which the aim is to halve polluting substances by 2030.It has yet to be officially confirmed by both parties and aims to take an important first step towards achieving zero emissions by 2050.Nonetheless, within the same agreement there are quite a few exceptions, which may lead to an extension of the time needed to adapt to the new standards. up to ten years for all those areas “where compliance with the directives by the expiry date would prove unattainable due to specific climatic and orographic conditions, or where the necessary reductions can only be achieved with a significant impact on existing heating systems”, including which promptly appears Northern Italy and, logically, Lombardy.That same Lombardy where ironically they took place on the same day as the agreement anti-pollution regulations precisely because of the unbreathable air, which is now so polluted that it has led hundreds of thousands of citizens to ask for a compensation for physical and moral damages.

The agreement sealed between the European Council and the Eurochamber aims to bring the air quality parameters in the various EU countries to the level of the standards dictated by the World Health Organization, simultaneously taking an important step towards the zero emissions objective by 2050.The new directive will take into consideration numerous pollutants, establishing specific standards for each of them, and will require each member country to present projections and draw up an action directive to adapt the areas of its territory to the new lowered minimums.However, it provides that countries can request exemptions based on the conditions in which certain areas find themselves:for areas where the transition is too difficult to adopt in a short time, a postponement may be requested until 2040, while for those territories where "projections show that the limit values ​​cannot be reached by the set deadline", until 2035, with the possibility of a further two-year extension.To request the derogation, Member States will have to submit additional projections and working maps to demonstrate “that the excess will be kept at the lowest possible levels and that the limit value will be reached no later than the end of the derogation”.

It is still not clear what these "projections" and these "work maps" consist of and there appear to be no obligations, minimums or constraints of any kind to be respected in drawing up these studies and operational plans, so it is difficult to predict which areas may request access to the exceptions.What is certain is that Northern Italy, and specifically Lombardy and the regions of the Po Valley, fall perfectly within the canons of the territories that can request a postponement to 2040.And ironically a few days before the agreement the media scandal broke out regarding the ranking of the Swiss company IQAir, which placed Milan in third place of its report on the most polluted cities in the world, while on February 20th the new anti-pollution regulations.Generally speaking, the Po Valley is one of the most polluted areas in the world and is first in Europe in the list of areas with the higher number of premature deaths for pollution.

Precisely for these reasons, over three hundred thousand Lombard citizens have submitted expressions of interest for one request for compensation for the physical and moral damage resulting from the high levels of smog in the Po Valley.The lawyer who will support the citizens has already filed the documents in court and explained how the sentences of the European Court of Justice are sufficient to start the case.The same agreement between the European Council and Parliament signed on 20 February provides for one possibility of compensation for citizens who live in non-compliant states in terms of combating air pollution, and when it is approved it could consolidate the cause of those hundreds of thousands of Lombard citizens tired of living in unbreathable air.

[by Dario Lucisano]