Milan: Most European countries remain on track to meet the air pollution ceilings they signed up to for the rest of the decade, the European Environment Agency reported on 1 July, handing a rare piece of encouraging news to a continent where dirty air still shortens hundreds of thousands of lives every year.

The agency checked national emissions against the targets set for 2020 to 2029 under the bloc’s clean-air law. For most of the five pollutants that do the greatest damage, the numbers are heading the right way. Sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and the fine particles known as PM2.5 have all fallen sharply since 2005, as coal plants closed, vehicle standards tightened and industry cleaned up its exhaust.

Progress is uneven, and the agency is blunt about where it stalls. Ammonia, which drifts off fields as farmers spread manure and nitrogen fertiliser, has barely moved in two decades. Several governments look set to miss their ammonia commitments unless agriculture ministries force a change, and the pollutant feeds directly into the particle haze that settles over valleys such as the Po basin around this city.

The agency ties the health stakes to hard figures. Fine particles alone are linked to roughly a quarter of a million early deaths across the Union each year, with heart disease, strokes and lung conditions doing most of the harm. Cutting emissions further, its analysts argue, would spare health systems billions and let more cities meet the tighter limits that take effect later this decade.

Officials in Copenhagen framed the check-up as a warning against complacency rather than a victory lap. Meeting a 2029 ceiling does not mean the air is clean, they stressed, because the World Health Organization’s guideline levels sit well below the Union’s legal thresholds. Closing that gap will demand steeper cuts in traffic, heating and farming than most capitals have yet planned.

The report also flags a monitoring problem. A handful of member states still report patchy or late data, which makes it harder to judge whether a country is genuinely improving or simply counting differently. The agency wants tighter reporting and faster verification so that laggards cannot hide behind gaps in the numbers.

For the Commission, the findings sharpen a familiar dilemma. It has promised to help farmers rather than punish them, yet ammonia will not fall without changes to how livestock are fed and how fertiliser reaches the soil. Environmental campaigners want binding action; farm groups want subsidies and time. The next revision of the clean-air rules, already under preparation, will test which side prevails.

More detail on the assessment sits on the agency’s newsroom, while the Commission’s own environment service tracks the wider policy at its air quality pages. Both point to the same conclusion: Europe is winning the fight against air pollution, but slowly, and the last stretch will be the hardest.