Air Quality Directive (AQD)

One priority of EU is to stop the emission of air polluting substances at the point, where they are emitted. As traffic causes a large part of air pollution, legislation tried to reduce air emissions by numerous direct and indirect means. Different pieces of legislation are regularly updated and requirements for air emissions made more severe, though legislation on air emissions from transport means - vehicles, ships, but also from mobile machines - only applies to new transport means and does not require the retrofitting of those vehicles and etc., which are already in use; thus, the effects of new legislative measures are delayed in time and are partly compensated for by an increase in traffic.

Generally, it is difficult to strike a fair balance between the interest in reducing air emissions and thereby protecting human health and the environment, and the interest of avoiding investments in emission-reducing techniques which are often costly. A concrete example would be a provision that limits the consumption of a passenger car to three liters of fuel per 100 km, or a provision that a car must be designed as not being able to drive quicker than 100 km/h. Such provisions would have massive impact on air emissions, but also on the car production and trade (including exports), the size of cars, traffic infrastructure and on the economy in general.