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Poland’s efforts to improve air quality to take up to 100 years to pay off
Wojciech Kosc in Warsaw
Poland is too slow in improving air quality and if efforts continue at their cur- rent slow pace, improvement will come in decades at best, with some areas standing to benefit a century from now, a report by the state’s audit body
NIK said on September 11.
Poland’s air is among the most polluted in the European Union. The main source of pollution is heating in the cold season, as people often use low quality coal or litter for heating. Poverty plays a role in that to an extent, but poor awareness of the environmental effects of such practices is also to blame.
Car traffic is another cause of smog, with only some Polish cities taking steps to limit entry of vehicles downtown and revamp infrastructure to encourage use of public transit.
The government has pledged to step up the fight against air pollution after smog became a topic of national debate a couple of years ago. The administra- tion announced a PLN100bn (€23.2bn) programme to clean up air earlier this year but efforts have been slow and compromised by the coal lobby, NIK said.
“The energy ministry’s proposal regarding quality standards for solid fuels secures to a much greater extent the interests of the coal lobby, than striving to protect Poles and the environment from the negative effects of air pollution,” NIK said in the report.
NIK titled the report sarcastically “Take care of your health – do not breathe”. Dirty air has been estimated to cause as many 44,000 premature deaths in Poland, according to the European Environment Agency.
Warsaw shrouded in smog: NIK titled its report “Take care of your health – do not breathe”.
The vote increases the pressure on leaders of the European People’s Party to suspend or expel Fidesz from their ranks.
French President Emmanuel Macron called the censure of Hungary the
first step to fight illiberalism. Macron has sought to take the lead in fighting nationalists including Orban and Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, and he has called himself the “main opponent” of the two politicians.
Macron said the vote presented a choice of “values” for the Old Continent’s future.
However, Hungary has other support- ers within the EU. Bringing the Article 7 procedure to the final stage would require the unanimous support of all other EU member states, which ana- lysts say is unlikely. Poland has already indicated it would veto sanctions against Hungary.
The European Commission initiated similar proceedings against Warsaw
in December and three months later the Hungarian parliament adopted
a resolution supporting Warsaw in its fight against the bloc, saying the com- mission does not have “the right to meddle” in the domestic affairs of member states and that it was “unjusti- fied” in initiating Article 7 proceedings.
Hungarian FM defiant
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said the approval of the report was "petty revenge by pro-migra- tion politicians". Szijjarto slammed the debate and the vote as a “show trial”, arguing that Sargentini had compiled
it without even arranging a delegation visit to Hungary.
He contended that the vote was "fraudu- lent" and insisted that under European agreements abstentions should have been counted as votes against adopting the report. (Even if those votes had been counted, the report received support from 64% of MEPs.) He added that the Hungarian government would study legal remedy options.
When asked if Fidesz would stay in the
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