Prague, Sept 26 (CTK) – The Czech Environment Ministry faces another lawsuit over air pollution, which the Vlasta Coalition NGO filed yesterday, challenging the ministry’s programme of tackling air pollution in Prague as ineffective, Vlasta members have told journalists.
The lawsuit they lodged with the Prague Municipal Court has been joined by Olga Richterova, a Prague resident, assisted by the Frank Bold lawyer’s office.
The ministry’s programme of improving the quality of air is ineffective and with no prospect of solution, the activists said.
The ministry insists that the programme meets all requirements set by law.
In the past two months, similar lawsuits were also filed by people from the areas of Ostrava, north Moravia, Usti nad Labem, north Bohemia, and Brno.
All the four lawsuits, including the new one lodged yesterday, want the court to scrap the ministry’s programmes and the ministry to adopt new and better ones.
The court is expected to decide on the case by the end of the year.
“The so called Programmes of improvement of the quality of air do not lead towards their basic goal – the meeting of legal [air pollution] limits in the areas with a low quality of air, so that citizens can breathe clean air there,” lawyer Kristina Sabova said.
Jana Tausova, from the ministry’s press department, said the ministry has created the programmes in accordance with law, and they were approved by two teams of experts.
The abolition of the programmes would be a bad piece of news for people, because it would mean a postponement of the measures that particular regions and towns are bound to take to improve the quality of air by 2020, Tausova said.
Air pollution in Prague has for many years exceeded the dust particles, nitrogen oxides and benzo(a)pyrene limits set by both the Czech law and the relevant EU directive.
This causes the illness or death of thousands of people a year.
In the past, the ministry asked the EC for temporary exemptions from the dust particle and nitrogen dioxide limits, but the EC refused to grant them.
Prague has been unable to reach the limits not even by the deadlines the ministry set itself.
By the end of September, the Czech Republic is to submit another report about its meeting the limits to Brussels.
Alan Andrews, lawyer from the ClientEarth international organisation, said Prague is a part of a wave of similar lawsuits lodged across Europe. Residents of Brussels have lodged one in the past two weeks, he said.
The Prague lawsuit is a message to the EU, which has neglected the quality of fuel and car production criteria for a long time, Andrews told journalists.
