The EU is trying to clean up the air across the Continent, though it has done little about pollution in its own back yard.
On a crisp morning earlier this month, Karmenu Vella, the EU’s top environmental official, set off for a walk from the European Commission building. Alongside him was Marta Presmanes, a 42-year-old employee of the Commission’s international aid section, who wanted to show Vella just how bad the air is around the EU’s headquarters.
The number of ultra fine airborne particles known as PM1 rose fivefold as soon as they stepped outside, according to an air monitoring device Presmanes used. It reached 58,300 particles per cubic centimeter during their walk — roughly 60 times the level measured in a clean countryside area, data Presmanes shared with POLITICO showed.
The tiny PM1 particles — caused mainly by traffic in urban areas — can penetrate deep into the cardiovascular system and cause heart disease, among other serious illnesses, health experts say.
“Brussels is the host city of EU institutions, which are in charge of environmental protection in Europe,” said Presmanes, a member of Bruxsel’air, a group that campaigns to cut pollution in the city. “It should be an example of clean air.”
But Brussels is far from an environmental poster child. Like many other EU capitals, its air pollution is well above levels recommended by the World Health Organization. This is partly due to a high proportion of diesel cars — and to what environmentalists say is a sluggish attitude to the problem from local authorities.
Air quality is particularly bad in the European Quarter, where the EU institutions are concentrated, and concern about pollution has prompted a green revolt among employees. The EU Cyclists’ Group (EUCG), made up of more than 1,500 people who work in the EU’s major institutions, wrote an open letter last September asking the Commission to pressure the Brussels authorities to cut pollution levels.
“The EUCG is increasingly concerned about the negative effects on our health of the heavy air pollution caused by Brussels road traffic, to which EU staff and their families are exposed every working day,” the letter said.
The Commission never replied, the cyclists say.
Environment Commissioner Vella’s office told POLITICO it was “concerned about air pollution across Europe, not just in Brussels or around its own buildings.” It said the Commission was taking action against 19 member countries that did not meet clean air standards, including Belgium.
Diesel damage
Some EU employees have decided letter-writing isn’t enough. Last weekend, hundreds of protesters placed pollution masks on statues in the city to make their point. Among them was Bertrand Wert, a Commission employee and green opposition councilor in the Ixelles commune of Brussels. He said he became interested in the issue in 2014 after noticing that he and his children were developing a chronic cough.
“We need to ban diesel cars as soon as possible. Diesel is killing people,” Wert said.
Belgium has the second-highest proportion of diesel cars in the EU, at 61.8 percent, second only to Luxembourg, according to Eurostat data. Around 1.4 million of the dirtiest diesel vehicles are on the road in Belgium, some four times the volume in other EU countries with a similar-sized population, such as Portugal and the Czech Republic.
The domination of diesel is explained partly by a generous tax regime. According to a 2014 report by the OECD, the total annual subsidy composed of tax breaks per diesel car in Belgium is €2,763, the highest among all the 27 OECD countries. Moreover, the Belgian duty on petrol is 43 percent higher than on diesel, according to the European Environment Agency.
Scientists look at levels of various tiny particles to measure pollution, particularly those known as PM1, PM2.5 and PM10 (although only levels of the latter two are regulated by EU laws.)
Pollution in Brussels is not as bad as in some other European cities. Warsaw, Budapest and Vilnius are among EU capitals with significantly poorer air quality.
But Brussels’ annual average of 18.2 micrograms per meter cubed of PM2.5 is almost double the World Health Organization’s recommended maximum level of 10 micrograms. That compares to an average of 11.3 in Copenhagen and 15 in London, despite the latter having a population four times larger than Brussels.
Exposure to high levels of toxic fine particles is responsible for 632 premature deaths in Brussels every year, according to figures quoted by the regional government.
Belgium is also among 16 countries breaching EU air quality standards on PM10 particles and among 12 countries breaking limits on nitrogen dioxide, another air pollutant closely linked to diesel cars.
The Commission has opened infringement procedures — the judicial process used by the EU to enforce its legislation — over both issues. Belgium now faces a fine, depending on future rulings from the European Court of Justice.
Belgian disease
Brussels’ pollution problems are caused not just by diesel cars but by large numbers of people who prefer to drive to work rather than take public transport.
“The commute is a Belgian disease,” said Alain Flausch, who was CEO of the capital’s public transport system operator for more than a decade up to 2011.
Around 350,000 people are thought to commute into Brussels each day, with around 200,000 of those coming by car and the rest by train, Flausch said. The European Commission says that commuter traffic accounts for an additional 154,000 cars entering the city every day.
Commuters have plenty of incentive to get behind the wheel. Company cars are common in Belgium and Brussels is full of subterranean car parks. Parking for the Commission’s staff of roughly 30,000 is free of charge.
Two of the main highways in and out of the Belgian capital run right next to Europe’s big institutions. Rue de la Loi stretches four lanes wide and bisects the space between the Commission and European Council buildings, while Rue Belliard runs alongside the European Parliament.
These city center highways have helped Belgium become Europe’s most congested country in terms of hours wasted or delays on its creaking road network, the European Commission said in a recent review of the country’s environmental policies. Almost 80 percent of transport in Belgium is by private car.
“We have built lots and lots of highways into our cities and we haven’t really organized our public space very well,” said William Todt, executive director at Transport & Environment, a green NGO based in Brussels. “Now we have a big problem.”
Action plan
Efforts to tackle pollution are complicated by Belgium’s fragmented political system. For example, pollution measurement stations may be managed by the federal authorities, on a street administered by a regional authority, in an area taken care of by the local commune, said Wert, the Commission employee. This makes assessing the scale of the problem difficult, let alone coming up with solutions.
Last June, the Brussels region published an action plan on air, energy and climate. Its focus was on the creation of a city-wide Low Emission Zone to begin in 2018. But critics such as Liévin Chemin from BRAL, a group striving to build a more environmentally friendly city, say it is nowhere near ambitious enough. The only diesel cars to be banned in the Brussels region in 2018 will be those built prior to 1997 — of which there are very few. A ban on diesel cars built prior to 2015 will only begin in 2025.
“The Brussels regional government should bolster its Low Emission Zone,” said Chemin, who wants Brussels to adopt a congestion charge similar to the one used in London and other cities.
But Céline Fremault, the Brussels minister in charge of the environment, defended her approach. “The Low Emissions Zone is a gradual scheme … This is meant to secure citizens’ understanding and acceptance of the new rules and the adaptation of their behavior,” her office said.
Missing monitors
The EU’s militant cyclists are also concerned that air pollution is not being properly monitored. Three monitoring stations near the major EU institutions did not function for several years. Two remain out of action, while a third, at the busy Arts-Loi intersection, was switched back on in December after eight years.
Early readings from the revived monitoring station show nitrogen dioxide levels peaking at three times the EU’s official limit of 40 micrograms per cubic meter on a regular basis.
Click on the location of a monitoring station to see pollution levels.
Another monitoring station near Wert’s home in Ixelles — situated on the busy Avenue de la Couronne close to the European Parliament — has recorded levels of nitrogen dioxide exceeding the EU limit for the past seven years in a row.
For now, however, EU employees and other Brussels residents have little option but to put up with the poor air quality.
“Workers and inhabitants are constantly taking in high levels of air pollution because you can’t simply stop breathing,” Presmanes said.
This story has been updated to correctly identify the campaigning group in paragraph five.
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