Historical overview and main features
Objective of Directive 2008/50/EC
The main 
objective of Directive 2008/50/EC is the protection of human health and the environment against air pollution (Article 1). Air pollution is a serious, EU-wide problem: European Commission in "A Clean Air Programme for Europe" estimated, that there are about 400.000 premature deaths per year due to air pollution and that the annual economic damage caused by it (workday losses, health care losses, crop yield losses, damage to buildings and etc.) was about 43 billion euro. Of course, significant reductions of such damage cannot be achieved by Directive 2008/50/EC alone: thus, the next section will describe what other legislative measures EU adopted to reduce air pollution and to improve the protection of humans and the environment.
Directive 2008/50/EC requires Member States to continuously assess the quality of air with respect to different pollutants mentioned above. For that purpose, Member States shall set up fixed measurement station for this purposes; in area, where the level of pollutants is low, modelling techniques are sufficient to assess air quality. The number and location of the sampling points is decided by Member States which must, though, respect criteria laid down in Directive 2008/50/EC.
