Many European countries are failing to comply with international and European standards on air quality. Moreover, many governments have failed to take effective action to improve air quality and hence to protect their citizens’ health. These are two of the findings of a joint audit performed by 14 European audit offices, including the Netherlands Court of Audit, as well as the Israeli national audit office and the European Court of Auditors. The aim of the audit was to ascertain whether the governments of the countries in question were taking action to improve the air quality.
This joint report is a comprehensive summary of 16 audits on air quality performed by the European Court of Auditors and by 15 SAIs in Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Israel, Kosovo*, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the Netherlands. In order to collect and assess comparable information on national government actions, the 15 SAIs prepared a common audit framework containing the main audit question, the audit topics and the corresponding secondary questions to be addressed by the national audits. The main audit question was: “What is known about the effectiveness and efficiency of measures taken by national and local governments to improve air quality, and are these measures compliant with international and national legislation?” The SAIs identified six major issues as being relevant to government action on improving air quality: main problem, governance system, statutory rules and regulations, policy, funding and monitoring. The aim of this joint audit has been to assess how air quality policies and actions are implemented in the participating countries and to generate shared conclusions and recommendations. Additionally, we hope that the joint audit will inspire SAIs by sharing good practices and passing on knowledge.
Findings
Eight SAIs were not able to audit the effectiveness and efficiency of the measures taken by their respective governments. Among the reasons for this were that no policy had been adopted, no performance indicators had been specified, and the monitoring information was inadequate. The seven other SAIs indicated that the measures taken by their governments were at best only partially effective. The national governments in question have not given sufficient priority to the problem of air pollution, with all the attendant consequences for human health. Despite the differences between the countries, we conclude that (except for Estonia) the governments in the participating countries have not taken sufficient action to improve air quality. We based this main message on the following overall conclusions: 1) most participating countries do not comply with national and international standards and still exceed limit or target values; 2) not all countries have adopted a national policy; not all have performance indicators; 3) there is a lack of coordination among actors and policies; 4) governments have limited information on budgets; 5) where there is a budget, this is not always sufficient; 6) monitoring systems do not always function properly; 7) there is scope for improving public information.
