Effective air pollution limits could save more than 20,000 lives every year, yet some national governments are threatening to veto EU measures to tackle toxic pollution.

A European petition launched today calls on governments to protect citizens’ health and the environment by adopting a European environmental standards document called the ‘revised LCP BREF’. The petition also demands that governments protect their citizens’ health by imposing strict limits on toxic pollution from coal.

A recent report [1] has shown how new pollution limits could help reduce the annual number of premature deaths caused by burning coal from 22,900 to 2,600 deaths.

The new standards are the result of years of negotiations between government, industry and NGO representatives. Their adoption was expected to be a formality but pressure from industry has led various Member States to threaten to veto the new rules at the final hurdle. [2]

Major European environmental groups the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe, Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) and WWF have teamed up with campaigning organisation WeMove.EU to launch the petition. The petition is available in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Polish, it will be delivered to national governments a week before a crucial vote by national governments at an EU Committee meeting on April 28. [3]

Notes to editors:

[1] See: Lifting Europe’s Dark Cloud: How cutting coal saves lives & country-specific factsheets.

[2] A leaked letter revealed that a group of five countries wrote to Commissioner Vella in September last year demanding that the revised LCP BREF be further delayed. Ministers from the UK, Poland, Czech Republic, Finland and Greece wrote that there was a need to avoid a “disproportionate financial cost or technical burden on industry”. Yet updating the standards is already more than two years behind schedule and the delay in implementing them has already led to more than 54,000 additional deaths and almost €150 billion in associated health costs – a burden on taxpayers all over Europe. In fact, the public benefits will be significantly higher because the standards will also apply to more than 2,000 other non-coal Large Combustion Plants in the EU and will also set stricter discharge limits for water pollutants.

[3] The Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) Article 75 Committee