Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 17 July 2019 - Strasbourg

Clean air zone in EU cities (debate)

  Judith Bunting (Renew). – Mr President, as a British Liberal Democrat, I was elected to keep Britain in the European Union, and one of my main reasons for wanting to be here is to help protect our shared environment. Dirty air knows no borders. Poor air quality has more than ten times the health impact than road traffic accidents, and it is the number one cause of premature death in the EU.

In this age of innovation and advanced technology, this is not acceptable. We can do better; we must do better. But to do that, we need more ambition and more scientific research. We need to work with Member States to enforce targeted ultra-low emission zones in our small towns as well as in our cities. Every market town, every small town has a junction or a road where the locals know that air pollution is out of control. There is a clear case to charge dirty drivers on health grounds and, as they say, we have the technology to help them stop doing that, and now we need to use it.