Environmental protection | Dispute over clean air: Federal Court on the move

The capital lies under a blanket of haze. German Environmental Aid criticizes the lack of measures to keep the air clean. Photo: dpa/Federico Gambarini Berlin. The Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig has dealt with the legality of the current air pollution control program. The focus of the Federal Environment Ministry's appeal against a ruling by the Berlin Higher Administrative Court (OVG) is the question of whether the forecasts on which the program is based are partly incorrect because the most current available data were not taken into account. The Federal Administrative Court wants to announce its decision on October 7th at 3 p.m.

Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) considers the air pollution control program decided by the federal government in May 2024 to be inadequate and has filed a lawsuit against it. In July 2024, the OVG condemned the federal government to improve parts of the program. In the court's opinion, the proposed measures were not sufficient in all respects to comply with the European requirements for reducing emissions of air pollutants (ref.: 11 A 16.20). The Federal Environment Ministry appealed against the verdict. However, the court confirmed essential parts of the National Air Pollution Control Program.

The draft of the program was presented in May 2023, but was only approved by the federal government a year later. The DUH criticized the fact that there were already more current forecasts during this period that should have been taken into account.

When asked by the Chairman of the 7th Senate, the trial representative from the Federal Environment Ministry explained that the coordination between the numerous departments involved had taken so long.

“The federal government is taking too few measures to reduce pollution or is not even taking them at all,” said the Federal Managing Director of the DUH, Jürgen Resch. According to the DUH, there are around 60,000 premature deaths in Germany every year due to exposure to nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter. If successful, the federal government would have to supplement the program with effective measures that would reduce emissions of ammonia, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter nationwide.

A spokesman for the Federal Environment Ministry emphasized that the program was effective and both sides had the same goal. We work with the most current data available. dpa/nd

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