THE European Union’s authority on environmental issues such as air pollution has grown greatly since the 1980s. So too have Eurosceptics' carps about meddling foreign bureaucrats sticking their noses into domestic affairs. But Brussels politicking is looking increasingly puny compared with recent exploits of some local politicians, choking under the threat of EU sanctions.

Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, the mayor of Madrid, was recently accused by state prosecutors of having air pollution monitoring stations moved in secret from busy road-side locations to the verdant tranquility of the city’s parks. The unsurprising consequent drop in the recorded level of pollutants had been proclaimed as evidence of a great victory for the mayor in the capital’s battle against its noxious urban atmosphere, leading  Mr Ruiz-Gallardón to boast that air quality in Madrid had never been better.

Readings from such sensors are used by the European Commission to enforce mandatory limits on dangerous airborne pollutants. The smaller sorts of airborne particles are alone thought to cause 380,000 premature deaths in Europe every year. A recent study by London’s Queen Mary University linked particulate matter exposure to pneumonia, particularly among children. It found that Londoners breathe in air that is more harmful than that in Accra, the capital of Ghana. Although London's air is no more polluted than Accra's overall, wood smoke, prevalent in poorer countries, is less toxic to the airway cells than the diesel exhausts that waft through the rich world's urban centres. 

Such findings have not stopped 20 of the 27 EU member states brazenly flouting air-quality targets. And Madrid is not the only city accused of underhand tactics in fending off financial sanctions. Later this month the Commission will deliver its verdict on Britain's plea for more time to meet pollution-reduction targets. If it is rejected, British taxpayers may have to pay through their noses for the dubious pleasure of inhaling their capital's air, which has been at illegal levels every year since 2005 and, as a result, risks burning a €300m hole in the cash-strapped government's pocket.

Predictably, green campaigners remain unconvinced by government's argument that a single monitoring station on London’s Marylebone Road is located in an area with the highest airborne particle concentrations in London. They note that this claim is based on a computer simulation that shows that part of London to be particularly vulnerable to such pollution, while ignoring several other sensors in different parts of the city which also record levels well above EU limits. The government insists their location, too, is inauspicious, though it has done little to explain why it thinks so.

In fact, officials in both Madrid and London are free to select sites as they please. Janez Potoÿnik, the EU's environmental commissioner, told a recent meeting in London that he could only consider the data presented to him, and hope that governments are not being disingenuous. This need not be an entirely vain hope. A Commission spokesman explained to Babbage that measuring air-pollution levels in parks or green areas, while smacking of political expediency, may accurately reflect long-term exposure levels, provided that the sites are situated close to residential areas, and additional spots are included to reflect the exposure of the whole urban population.

None of this has not prevented Spain from being referred to the European Court of Justice, along with Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Slovenia and Cyprus. It remains to be seen whether the judges, like the greens and many European city dwellers, smell something amiss.