No. The air quality of paris for example is notoriously terrible, with many instances of worse air quality than Beijing. For a environmentally conscious and highly regulated nation that is an absolute disaster.

Diesel has been linked to producing more byproducts that are responsible for smog than gasoline. If anything this has all been a long well funded war by european car manufactures to push locally produced diesel vehicles which appear to have better efficiency than gasoline. France was swept by the trend and now is regretting the fact that >60% of their cars are diesel powered.

Simply put this was all a tragedy of choosing wrong metrics. Europe chose CO2 levels as the important metric to try to reduce. By optimizing for CO2 they allowed vehicles that produced 4 times more NO2 and up to 22 times more other fine particulates which are significantly worse for human health. Gasoline or Diesel, we still are damaging our environment. It's just with Diesel we see more of that damage done on ourselves.

Edit:

And just as a final point, the US alone has spent $51 million for "green diesel" VW cars. Now we know.