Governmental program for reducing air pollution – only on paper

There has been almost no governmental action in the past years to reduce air pollution, which causes the premature death of about 14000 Hungarians every year. This was found by the Clean Air Action Group (CAAG) after analyzing the governmental report about the implementation of the program for reducing particle (PM10) pollution.
Although the latest governmental report says that PM10 pollution has decreased significantly since 2011, i.e. since the government adopted the program,the Clean Air Action Group is highly skeptical about this. Besides the kilometer-based road toll for trucks (which was a major step forward) the government hasn’t made any progress in this area. Further proves our point that in the past years the air pollution monitoring stations did not function on many occasions, especially when the air was extremely polluted. (Hopefully this will change from this year as the stations have finally been renovated.)
Furthermore, these monitoring stations were installed mostly to measure pollution caused by transport, which is partly correct from the point of view that in some parts of Hungary air pollution from transport impacts the population the most. However, in today in Hungary most of the air pollution comes from residential burning. There is no improvement in this area, quite on the contrary, the problem is rather getting worse.

At this link one can read in Hungarian the assessment (22 pages) of the governmental report by the Clean Air Action Group:
https://www.levego.hu/sites/default/files/pm10-program-eszrevetelek_2016aug.pdf

Translated by Evelin Kiss