The Council of State condemned France, on Monday, to pay two penalty payments of 10 million euros. According to the Council of State, the limit thresholds for air pollution by nitrogen dioxide are still exceeded in several areas of France, particularly in the urban areas of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. In total, the State has been sentenced to a penalty payment of 30 million euros so far in this case.
Insufficient improvements
While acknowledging the measures taken in the transport sector and in construction, the Council of State notes that they have not yet had a quantified positive consequence in the three largest French cities. It also considers that the “low emission zones” (ZFE) provided for in the Climate and Resilience Law of August 2021
are not new, some having been put in place even before this law. These EPZs are intended to protect populations in the most polluted dense areas, by prohibiting the circulation of the most polluting vehicles.
It also notes that, although plans for the protection of the atmosphere have been initiated, “the objective of respecting the limit thresholds remains very distant and is not accompanied by any element allowing these deadlines to be considered as being the shortest. possible”.
A procedure which has already cost the State 30 million euros
The Council of State has was seized by several environmental defense associations in 2017
and had ordered the State “to implement plans to reduce the concentrations of nitrogen dioxide and fine particles in thirteen areas in France, in order to comply with the European directive on air quality” from this year -the. Three years later, in 2020, he judged that the measures taken were “insufficient” and therefore condemned the State to act
otherwise he would have to pay a penalty of ten million euros per half-year of delay.
Another year later, the slowness of the reaction of the State had pushed the Council of State to condemn him to pay a first penalty payment in August 2021
for the delay in the first half of 2021. There are therefore, this Monday, the two new penalty payments, for the delays in the second half of 2021 and the first half of 2022.
The total amount of the penalty payments to which the State is condemned for the delay in its action against air pollution in this file therefore amounts to 30 million euros currently, which will be distributed between the associations which have seized the Council . But this amount could increase further if the delays and shortcomings were to continue. The Council of State will review France’s actions in 2023.
Pollution, linked in particular to car traffic, represents a major public health issue. “Mortality linked to ambient air pollution remains a significant risk in France with 40,000 deaths attributable each year to fine particles”, underlined Public Health France last year.