Public awareness regarding air pollution in the European Union
is at an all-time high and citizens expect authorities to act. In
this vein, the European Commission1 has recently taken a number of
direct and indirect actions, including engagement of the Court of
Justice of the EU, enforcement measures against car manufacturers
and a Europe-specific "Green Deal," to stem the tide of
rising air pollution and become the world's first
climate-neutral continent by 2050.
In one such action, the Commission referred several EU
"Member States" to the Court of Justice of the EU over
poor air quality. The Commission is of the opinion that those
Member States failed to respect limit values for nitrogen dioxide
(NO2) and to take appropriate measures to keep
exceedance periods as short as possible. Once the limit values are
exceeded, an appropriate measure is, among others, the
implementation of diesel car bans for either specific streets or
even whole cities in order to reduce NO2
