Fourth EU air quality directive text released

Environment Daily 1759, 02/11/04

Ministers are to approve within days the final text of the EU's fourth air quality daughter directive, which will regulate emissions of arsenic, cadmium, mercury, nickel and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

The law will tie a beefed up emission monitoring regime to best practice requirements under EU integrated pollution control legislation, and was agreed politically six months ago.

EU bureaucrats have now completed legal-linguistic checks, and the law will enter force twenty days after publication in the bloc's official journal. Member states are obliged to implement its provisions within a further two years.

See council note on procedure http://register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/en/04/st14/st14038.en04.pdf

and the final directive text http://register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/en/04/st03/st03678.en04.pdf.