Environment ministers agreed to water down draft proposals to revise the EU's IPPC industrial pollution directive on Thursday, but only after narrowly overcoming opposition from a group of countries who said the compromise was “not ecologically reasonable”.

The deal reached by the ministers closely mirrored compromise proposals tabled ahead of the Luxembourg meeting by the Czech EU presidency (EE 22/06/09). Almost all of the amendments adopted by the European Parliament in its first reading were rejected by member states (EE 10/03/09).

Under the agreement, certain large combustion plants (LCP) built before 2002 would have until 2021 to meet NOx and SO2 emission limits, one year later than the Czechs had proposed. New plants, defined as installations receiving a pollution permit for the first time under IPPC, would have to comply with more stringent limits by 2012.

The ministers also agreed a separate derogation from the limits for LCPs not operating more than 20,000 hours between 2016 and 2023. As part of the compromise, several governments including Poland and the UK dropped their demands to lower a proposed desulphurisation rate for LCPs of 96%.

But the issue that almost scuppered the compromise was how much flexibility member states should be granted in applying best available techniques (BAT) when determining pollution permits.

A blocking minority of countries initially refused to back the compromise, arguing that it gave states too much leeway to deviate from the BAT-associated emission limits. But whereas Germany, France and other countries maintained their opposition, the Netherlands reversed its initial veto to enable a qualified majority to back the compromise.

Germany dismissed the final outcome as “not a real compromise”. The block of countries who opposed Thursday’s council agreement will now hope that MEPs can force the council to increase its ambition during their second reading of the plans.