Croatia is among six member states which had exceeded the European Union's limit value for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in 2018, the European Environment Agency (EEA) said in its 2020 European air quality report on Monday.

Despite improved air quality in Europe in the past decade, the latest data show that nearly all Europeans continue to suffer due to air pollution, resulting in 400,000 premature deaths across the continent.

Six member states exceeded the EU’s limit value for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in 2018: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Italy, Poland, and Romania. Only four countries in Europe – Estonia, Finland, Iceland and Ireland – had fine particulate matter concentrations that were below the World Health Organization’s (WHO) stricter guideline values.

The EEA report notes that there remains a gap between EU’s legal air quality limits and WHO guidelines.

Exposure to fine particulate matter caused about 417,000 premature deaths in 41 European countries in 2018, according to the EEA assessment. About 379,000 of those deaths occurred in EU-28 where 54,000 and 19,000 premature deaths were attributed to nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ground-level ozone (O3), respectively.

EU, national and local policies and emission cuts in key sectors have improved air quality across Europe, the EEA report shows. Since 2000, emissions of key air pollutants, including nitrogen oxides (NOx), from transport have declined significantly, despite growing mobility demand and associated increase in the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions. Pollutant emissions from energy supply have also seen major reductions while progress in reducing emissions from buildings and agriculture has been slow.

Thanks to better air quality, around 60,000 fewer people died prematurely due to fine particulate matter pollution in 2018, compared with 2009. For nitrogen dioxide, the reduction is even greater as premature deaths have declined by about 54 % over the last decade.

Virginijus Sinkevicius, the European Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, welcomed such results.

“It is good news that air quality is improving thanks to the environmental and climate policies that we have been implementing. But we can’t ignore the downside – the number of premature deaths in Europe due to air pollution is still far too high. With the European Green Deal we have set ourselves an ambition of reducing all kinds of pollution to zero. If we are to succeed and fully protect people’s health and the environment, we need to cut air pollution further and align our air quality standards more closely with the recommendations of the World Health Organization. We will look at this in our upcoming Action Plan.”

The European Commission recently published a roadmap for the EU Action Plan Towards a Zero Pollution Ambition, which is part of the European Green Deal.

The EEA report also notes that long-term exposure to air pollutants causes cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, which both have been identified as risk factors for death in Covid-19 patients. However, the causality between air pollution and severity of the Covid-19 infections is not clear and further epidemiological research is needed.