The Minister of Environment and Water Julian Popov received representatives of the Association "For the Earth" at their request in order to discuss current topics related to the cleanliness of the atmospheric air in Sofia. Representatives of Sofia Municipality also participated in the meeting.

The non-governmental association expressed concerns that the locations of the two "disputed" air monitoring points in the capital - in the Mladost residential area next to the National Institute of Mechanical Engineering and in the Pavlovo district - have not yet been changed. According to them, these two locations do not allow for adequate measurement of pollution from transport traffic. They acknowledged the efforts by Sofia Municipality to propose new potential locations, but pointed out that the proposal is not reliable enough for the points for measuring nitrogen dioxide - a key pollutant from traffic.

In response, Minister Julian Popov assured that he actively supports citizen monitoring as an important source of data, but shared an understanding of the role of reference stations, which is to provide representative information on air quality in Sofia. He sees the solution to the problem not in disputes about moving individual stations, which would lead to a disruption of the data chain, but in upgrading the monitoring system by integrating data from reference stations and citizen measurements. “The issue is not about arguing whether to move a station two meters to the left or two meters to the right, but rather that the existing system needs to be improved to provide more data and more precise models so that people can have clear, understandable, and accurate information on the state of the air,” said the Minister.

He informed that a comprehensive analysis of the National Air Quality Monitoring System is forthcoming, on the basis of which the existing stations will be completely renovated and modernized, for which the Ministry of Environment and Water has the donor support of the Swiss government, so that the system meets the requirements of the new revised European Directive on Air Quality.

The upcoming transposition of the directive into Bulgarian legislation, due in December this year, was the other important focus of the meeting. The Ministry of Environment and Water expressed its readiness to consider and take into account the ideas and expertise of "For the Earth" Association in the process of drafting the legislative changes.