EU Environmental Law Principles as underlying principles of the AQD and END

The subsidiarity principle provides that EU action shall not go beyond what is necessary and limit itself to those measures which can be better realized at EU level than at national, regional or local level (Article 5(3) of the Treaty on European Union).

Both directives, that on ambient air quality (Air Quality Directive 2008/50/EC) and that on environmental noise (Noise Directive 2002/49/EC), have the objective to protect human health and the environment. They are both legally based on the present Article 192 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), and rightly so. Indeed, Article 191 TFEU, the introductory provision in the TFEU on EU environmental policy indicates that it is one of the objectives of this policy to contribute to the protection of human health. Both directives aim at reducing the exposure of humans to air pollution and to noise pollution.

That air pollution also contributes to causing environmental damage - damage to buildings, damage to vegetation and etc., – it is obvious. Much less scientific information is available about the damage of noise to the environment: information on noise damage to whales and other marine mammals is published from time to time, but comprehensive research results are lacking. As human beings are in any case part of the environment, and environmental policy has the explicit objective to protect human health, no doubt exists that both directives are part of the implementation measures of EU's environmental policy, as well as both directives are in compliance with the principle of subsidiarity.

Access to information in environmental matters:
Principles of EU Environmental Law as Underlying Principles of AQD and END: Prevention, Precaution, Correction, Subsidiarity, Proportionality
Dr Matthias Keller