Healthy air as an obligation of result in the whole European Union. Definitely a matter of time
(2024) The Right to a Healthy Environment in and Beyond the Anthropocene A European Perspective — ISBN: [9781035300419], published
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- Abstract
- Air quality law has started to move interestingly but still unevenly beyond a former status quo in the European Union. Pollutants are still treated differently, depending upon their legal framing. For several of them, considerable advances have been booked recently thanks to a clever and strategic litigation processes that radically transformed the approach to the Ambient Air Quality Directive and created the conditions, after so many years of dormance, for its effective implementation at Member State level. The effects of such awakening are felt in many big cities, in relation to transport policies. The litigation wave brightly demonstrated that, without case-law, such a legislation would never have even started to live up to the expectations. The driving force for such advances is found in the relation air builds with health and life and, therefore, calls for repetition. Because many European legislations, besides the Ambient Air Quality Directive, have also an impact on the composition of the air we breathe and pursue altogether an explicit objective of health protection, the solid golden thread that was recently patiently built, with a little spoon, shall necessarily be inspirational for any further developments. Remaining half-way would discredit the new European Union motto calling for a shift towards a zero-pollution paradigm and even a toxic-free environment. More answers are definitely needed, either through revisited legislation or case-law. In a time of sanitary crisis and in the open windows-societies we unexpectedly moved into, promoting health through modernized air policies is of course most relevant in the light of fundamental rights.
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Citations
Misonne, D. (2024). Healthy air as an obligation of result in the whole European Union. Definitely a matter of time. In Hendrik Schoukens (ed.) (ed.), The Right to a Healthy Environment in and Beyond the Anthropocene A European Perspective. EElgar. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/269631