The European Union will on Wednesday lay out plans to cut air and water pollution levels to zero by 2050.
Presented last year as part of the bloc's Green Deal ambitions, the plan will potentially eliminate more than 70 percent of the 300,000 premature deaths annually over the next decade.
It commits the EU to reducing pollution “to levels no longer considered harmful to health and natural ecosystems” by mid-century.
Europe lagging behind
The measures include an overhaul of the bloc’s air pollution regulation, in an effort to bring the EU closer to guidelines laid out by the World Health Organization.
That includes a target to cut the annual limit of fine particulate matter – the main pollutant – by more than half.
The rules will still mean that the EU falls short of WHO recommendations, a gap it hopes to narrow later in the decade.
"Air pollution is still the largest environmental threat to our health,” said EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius.
“The impacts are worse for the most vulnerable – children, the elderly, people with certain medical conditions.
“We want to set the EU on a trajectory for zero pollution in the air by 2050 at the latest. Fresh air shouldn’t be a luxury in Europe.”
The European Commission will also propose stricter measures to tackle pollutants in wastewater in areas of more than 1,000 inhabitants, and will promote using it to produce biogas.
Once the new rules are proposed, EU countries and the European Parliament must negotiate and approve them.
(with wires)
