Air pollution is responsible for the premature death of more than 16,000 persons in Hungary every year and the number of people with air pollution related diseases are even higher several orders of magnitude. However, the government does not take this seriously – this came to the light from the 2014 report on the implementation of the government’s PM10 emission reduction program.

In 2011, the Hungarian government accepted a program which aimed to reduce PM10 emission. PM10 is the particulate matter smaller than 10 micrometer which is extremely harmful to human health. The Clean Air Action Group (CAAG) welcomed the program which included most of the actions the green civil organizations have been proposing since years. On the other hand, the 2014 report revealed that the implementation is incredibly slow and in many cases there was only regression and not a single step forward. For example, neither the government nor the city council took the necessary steps against the outdated heating systems and the spreading of illegal burning. Extending the toll to the bypass roads around cities and to the urban entrance sections of motorways as well as the governmental support from public funds to encourage the usage of the highly harmful scooters are also examples of the regression mentioned above.

According to the Clean Air Action Group’s experience one of the main causes of air pollution is the lack of knowledge among the population. People usually don’t know at all the effective methods to reduce air pollution (sometimes not even the simplest). Thus the most efficient way to fix this situation would be extensive information campaigns to raise public awareness. This fact is well known by the government as well since it has been regularly carrying out remarkable campaigns in different topics. Therefore, it is shocking that the ministry responsible for environment allocated only 54 million HUF (180 000 EUR) for the PM10 reduction program in 2014 (and the same amount for 2015), and from this amount only a small fraction was used for raising public awareness.