Air Quality Directive (AQD)

Infringement procedures under Article 258 TFEU can be cumbersome: European Commission could bring the case against a Member State, even when one single local air quality plan is not in compliance with the legislative requirements. Furthermore, the procedure under Article 258 TFEU may take several years and as long as the CJEU has not ruled against the Member State the allegedly insufficient air quality plans may remain in force. The judgment of the CJEU is a declaratory judgment, stating, for example, that Member State X has not complied with its obligations under the TFEU, because the air quality plan in the agglomeration Z did not satisfy the requirements of EU law, meaning that it is still up to the Member State to act and which may take some time.

For this reason cases opened at national level may have an added value, if only because of the possibility on interim relief.

Despite these, following a series of four judgments (C-68/11 Commission v. Italy, C-34/11 Commission v. Portugal, C-365/10 Commission v. Slovenia (available only in French) and C-479/10 Commission v. Sweden (available only in French)) focusing only on the lack of compliance with Article 13, European Commission has opened new cases      against Member States for non-respect of limit values of Article 13(1) for PM₁₀ and NO₂, invoking also non-compliance with Article 23(1) because one or several local air quality plans did not keep the exceedance period as short as possible or were insufficient with regard to the measures taken. Recently (2015) it has referred a few Member States to the CJEU on these grounds (for example, C-488/15 Commission v. Bulgaria and Poland might be the one soon to be referred to the Court).