The UK has been referred to the European Court of Justice over its long-standing failure to deal with dangerous and illegal levels of air pollution.
The EU's Environment Commissioner Karmenu Vella said the bloc “owed it to its citizens” to take legal action after continued failures by national governments to meet EU limits for nitrogen dioxide.
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According to the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, air pollution causes around 40,000 early deaths a year in the UK.
The government has lost a number of legal battles on air pollution in British courts over recent years and now “could face fines totalling millions of pounds, ongoing until the problem is solved”, reports the BBC.
Levels of nitrogen dioxide, which is mostly produced by diesel vehicles, has been illegally high since 2010, but the governments’ latest plan in 2017 was condemned as “woefully inadequate” by city leaders and “inexcusable” by doctors.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the decision to take the UK to court has fuelled debate about Brexit, with environmentalists claiming that the EU had demonstrated what will be lost after Britain leaves the bloc.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove previously promised that environmental governance would not be diluted when the UK leaves the EU. But he revealed last week that his post-Brexit environmental watchdog would not have the automatic power to take the government to court, says the BBC.
Yesterday’s referral came the same day as the Energy and Climate Change Secretary Greg Clark “announced new measures to ramp up fossil fuel production, citing the “substantial benefits” of exploiting shale gas”, The Independent reports.