EU laggards miss date for pollution permits

The European Union passed legislation in 1996 to limit pollution from larger industrial installations.

The legislation, known as the integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC) directive, applied in the first instance to new factories and those undergoing major refurbishment. For existing plants, it was supposed to take effect on 30 October. Thousands of industrial plants are meant to have obtained pollution permits with emissions limits based on best available techniques (BATs).

IPPC rules cover the disposal of waste by landfill, waste treatment and storage facilities in a number of sectors ranging from manufacturing to farming. They aim to reduce emissions to air, water and land from industrial plants.

But a survey carried out by environmental news service Ends Europe Daily on the eve of the 30 October deadline showed that most member states were still not fully compliant. Up to 50% of permits had not been issued in some member states. Among the worst performers were Italy, France, Ireland and the Netherlands. More advanced member states, according to the survey, include Luxembourg, Finland, the UK, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Stavros Dimas, the European environment commissioner, warned that he would take legal action against late adopters. "Member states have not made sufficient efforts to comply with the directive in time," he said at a meeting of EU environment ministers last week (30 October). Their behaviour was, he said, "unacceptable", because emission reductions were needed if the EU was to meet its objectives on water, air pollution and climate change.

Catherine Ganzleben, a chemicals policy officer at the European Environmental Bureau, a conservation group, said: "Industrial installations without IPPC permits are generating pollution at levels that not only do not reflect BATs, but that have not been updated in over ten years. Certain member states are flagrantly disregarding their legal obligation to protect the environment under IPPC."

The already fragmented landscape is complicated still further because the Commission wants to revise the directive. It launched a review in 2005 and a public consultation this year. Dimas’s proposals, currently being reviewed within the European Commission, would integrate other laws into the IPPC directive, including the 2001 large combustion plant directive, the 2000 waste incineration and co-incineration directive, the 1999 solvents directive and three minor laws relating to titanium dioxide emissions.

The business lobby is concerned. "We think that the revision comes a bit early because a lot of the reference documents were only adopted recently. The Commission starts from the hypothesis that the current system did not deliver very much. We say ‘give it a chance’," said Folker Franz, a senior adviser for environmental affairs at BusinessEurope, the employers’ association.

Plans to bolster the role of technical guidance documents known as BREFs (best available techniques reference documents) in the granting of permits for installations are particularly worrisome for industry. In a statement sent to the Commission on Wednesday (31 October), BusinessEurope warned that documents should be used only for guidance purposes. "BusinessEurope believes that it is essential to take into account the technical characteristics of the installation, its geographical location and the local environmental conditions when setting up emission limit values," said the statement, warning that businesses might otherwise have to cut production to meet harmonised targets.

Environmentalists welcome stricter standards through beefed-up BREFs. "Until now the language was vague and some member states didn’t use them, leading to big differences between a permit for a large combustion plant in Greece and one in Germany," said Ganzleben. Strengthening the use of BREFs when issuing permits to pollute would, she said, reduce disparities across member states in the conditions attached to IPPC permits and would help achieve a level playing-field for industry.

Business and environmentalists are united, however, in their reservations about plans to introduce emissions trading for harmful pollutants nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide. The conventional wisdom appears to be that allowing companies to trade in the substances would not offset their effects on the health of local populations. Nitrogen dioxide causes asthma in children, while sulphur dioxide is linked to respiratory infections as well as the generation of acid rain.

The European Union passed legislation in 1996 to limit pollution from larger industrial installations.