ROLUL CONTENCIOSULUI JUDICIAR ÎN PREVENIREA ȘI COMBATEREA POLUĂRII AERULUI. CONTRIBUȚIA JURISPRUDENȚEI CURȚII DE JUSTIȚIE A UNIUNII EUROPENE

Air pollution is the biggest environmental threat to public health; every year, it generates the premature illness and death of over 5 million people worldwide and over 400 000 inhabitants of the EU. Such realities and the proliferation of the cases of non-compliance with the legal regulations and the measures adopted to prevent and combat air pollution have generated an increasing and more diverse judicial contentious, both at national level and at the level of the jurisdictions of the EU. By the Judgment of 26 June 2019, the Court of Justice of the EU has pronounced a solution for the reference for a preliminary ruling raised before a Belgian tribunal on the interpretation of Articles 6, 7, 13 and 23 and of Annex III of Directive 2008/50/EC. The intention was to find out to what extent the national jurisdictions can control the location of the sampling points and if it is possible to establish an average value, starting from the results of the different measuring stations, in order to evaluate the compliance with the limit values. The Court of Justice of the European Union has stated that national jurisdictions are competent to control the choice of the location of the air quality measurement stations and to take, with respect to the national authorities concerned, any relevant national measure; in order to evaluate the compliance with the limit-values, the pollution level of each sampling point must be taken individually. The new case law of the Luxembourg court contributes to strengthening the environmental contentious and its role in ensuring the application of the regulations in this field.