"Dutch activists lose case for cleaner air", 28 Dec 2017

The Netherlands is violating EU air quality standards, but is doing enough to improve the situation, a Dutch court ruled on Wednesday (27 December). The court rejected the request from Milieudefensie, the local branch of the international environmental lobby group Friends of the Earth, to order the national government to come up with new air quality plans...

In 2014, the European Court of Justice said that national courts can order governments to make sure that they comply with the EU's air quality directive...

In the Netherlands, Milieudefensie also went to court, because of too high levels of particulate matter and nitrogen dioxides, in particular due to traffic and intensive agriculture. Because the activists felt the court was taking too long to come to a decision, they requested a legal procedure through which the court comes to a quicker decision...

On Wednesday however, the original judges in The Hague who had been looking at the case since the beginning - whose progress Milieudefensie had deemed too slow [...] ruled that Milieudefensie had not shown concretely enough that the Dutch government should take more measures, and what the health damage was for the perceived inaction.