Ten days ago, the European Parliament published the new Air Quality (AQ) Directive in the European Journal. This regulation applies to 32 countries under the European Environmental Agency (EEA) umbrella. Unfortunately, the odour is not even mentioned in this ambient air regulation. Therefore, European citizens and European industrial organizations are again left unprotected.
Some months ago, we reviewed the draft proposal of this new European air regulation and we detailed the most relevant provisions for odour managers. At that time, the question was whether this AQ Directive would incorporate any provisions regarding odour levels in ambient air. The recently published Directive (EU) 2024/2881 of 23 October 2024 on ambient air quality and cleaner air for Europe does not.

