2000 Volume 21 Issue 6 Pages 355-359
The European Commission started activities to improve the environmental noise policy.In view of the high exposure of the population the future policy is no more restricted to the limitation of noise emissions but activities relating to the reduction of noise exposure are initiated based on the principle of shared responsibility.For the preparation of a new directive the Commission established several working groups, among others to work out proposals for harmonised European noise indicators(Working Group 1)and prediction and measurement methods(Working Group 3).In this paper the main recommendations of WG 1 are presented and discussed together with the basic concept of WG 3 for the elaboration of the harmonised prediction and measurement methods.Finally, the scope and the main regulations in the currently discussed draft of the new directive concerning the assessment and reduction of noise exposure are reported.