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Air pollution has reduced steadily across Europe over recent decades, yet it remains the region’s largest environmental health risk, causing diseases, lowering quality of life and leading to preventable deaths. The EU has set air quality standards to reduce risks posed by air pollution. This report presents analysis of the latest official 2023 and 2024 reported concentrations in Europe against current and future (2030) EU limit values and against the stricter World Health Organization guideline levels.
Key messages
EU air quality standards are still not fully met across Europe, despite ongoing overall improvements.
Since 2011, all countries have reduced exposure of their urban population to fine PM2.5 particles, the most harmful pollutant from a health perspective. Nevertheless, the vast majority (94%) of the EU urban population remains exposed to PM2.5 concentrations above the World Health Organization guideline level, highlighting the need for additional measures to reduce the associated health risks.
Many locations already have air quality concentrations below the new EU 2030 standards. But in order to meet these new standards everywhere, and based on current progress, additional measures to improve air quality, especially in cities, are likely to be needed.
Air quality improving but still a risk to health
Air quality in Europe has improved significantly over the past few decades for most pollutants. For some pollutants, such as benzene and cadmium, European countries are already meeting the standards set by European Union legislation on air quality. Positive improvements can also be seen for other air pollutants, such as sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, lead, arsenic or nickel, with only a few monitoring stations in Europe showing values for these pollutants above the EU standards.
Nevertheless, a significant number of locations across the EU have concentrations of other pollutants that exceed current standards in force, as well as the stricter WHO guideline values. A summary analysis for key pollutants that are harmful to human health is shown in Figure 1. Information on past trends in pollution levels in all countries is available in the EEA’s online AQ statistics data viewer.
Figure 1. Percentage of stations in 2023 with annual concentrations below applicable EU and WHO standards
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When assessed against the WHO guideline levels, the number of monitoring locations in 2023 where air quality is considered safe for health was relatively low, particularly for PM2.5 and ozone. This means an increase in the risk of health impacts associated with these pollutants occurring such as respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Achieving the recently revised EU limits, required by 2030, will help to reduce these health impacts and bring air quality levels close to the WHO guideline levels over the coming years.
Although combustion of fuels is a common source of most of these pollutants, reducing the health risk often requires a combination of different measures due to variation in the specific sources contributing to each pollutant. For example, for NO2 the key source is transport, in particular road traffic, and hence NO2 tends to be a particular problem in urban areas. While transport also causes PM10 and PM2.5, a more significant source is domestic burning of solid fuels, with agriculture and industrial activities also contributing. Ozone presents a slightly more complex challenge for relevant authorities to tackle, as it is formed in the atmosphere from a range of other pollutants and is also influenced by sunlight (as explained in this EEA briefing). Ozone tends to be a bigger issue in warmer regions and reducing ozone levels will require a combination of measures to reduce the contributing pollutants.
Background context
This report assesses concentrations of air pollutants in ambient air across Europe in 2023 and 2024, against the applicable EU standards and the WHO global air quality guideline levels (WHO, 2021). The EU standards currently in force were set out in the 2004 and 2008 ambient air quality directives (EU, 2004)(EU, 2008). The World Health Organization (WHO) set its air quality guideline levels in 2021. They are lower than the EU limit and target values, and aim to prevent significant impacts from air pollution on human health.
Directive (EU) 2024/2881 on ambient air quality and cleaner air for Europe (recast) (EU, 2024) entered into force on 10 December 2024, representing an important milestone in efforts to further reduce air pollution. The revised directive sets new and revised air quality (AQ) standards to be attained by 1 January 2030. This report also benchmarks the 2023 air quality data against a selection of those new standards. This is a preliminary analysis of the current distance-to-target and not a compliance assessment. However, it provides a first indication of how many stations or zones may require further measures to achieve compliance with the 2030 AQ standards. This baseline assessment can also help to identify, in view of the new obligations in the revised directive, potential hotspots where air quality roadmaps may be needed from 2026.
This report is the 2025 update of the EEA’s status of air quality series. It is underpinned by two reports from the EEA’s European Topic Centre on Health and Environment (ETC-HE, 2025a) (ETC-HE, 2025b). It is also part of the forthcoming air quality in Europe package, which will include a number of updated indicators on air quality and information on the harm to health caused by current levels of air quality in Europe.
Further details on all these regulated pollutants are provided in the following chapters.
Identifiers for EEA web report 01/2025
Title: Air Quality Status Report 2025
HTML: TH-01-25-006-EN-Q - ISBN: 978-92-9480-710-6 - ISSN: 1977-8449 - doi: 10.2800/9895153