Austria wants to ban lorries carrying certain goods from a 12km stretch of the Inn Valley motorway to improve air quality, but the Commission has said this would break EU rules.
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Austria, which has struggled to keep its Alpine air quality at levels the EU promised when the country joined in 1995, says it needs to ban lorries carrying waste, cereals, steel and cars from two stretches of the A12 to bring NOx down to agreed levels. The European news service Ends Daily says Brussels has told Vienna its plans are incompatible with EU law as they would “severely impede the free movement of goods” and “would not appear to lead to any significant improvement in air quality.”
This news story is taken from the September 2007 edition of T&E Bulletin.
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