Member States will have two years to transpose the new legislation into their national legal systems.
The directive is part of the wider overall strategy to reduce pollution caused by tropospheric ozone. It covers organic solvent emissions caused by commercial and industrial stationary sources, complementing the Auto-Oil programme (directives on atmospheric emissions from cars and lorries fitted with combustion engines) as well as the 1994 directive on the control of volatile organic compound emissions resulting from the storage of petrol and its distribution from terminals to service stations.