Tag: Water Framework Directive

The European Union's water blueprint, due by the end of the year, will focus on enforcement and implementation of laws already on the books rather than new legislation, says a Cypriot official whose government will host talks later in the year on the evolving water roadmap.

From pet food manufacturing to wastewater treatment, companies show no lack of imagination when it comes to improving water efficiency at this year's annual Green Week event in Brussels.

Huge water leakage differences between member states make an EU-wide water efficiency target “not necessary”, says an EU official working on the directive for the European Commission.

Making users pay for water should be part of any policymakers' toolkit to manage scarcity, says Lars H. Thunell of the World Bank's International Finance Corporation. But with safe drinking water now officially recognised as a human right, this has to be done in "a socially responsible way," he argues.

Europe's freshwaters are increasingly filled with pharmaceutical residues and other micro-pollutants, which are potentially harmful to human health and the environment, according to Friedrich Barth from the European Water Partnership (EWP), an industry-backed group.

Politicians from Hungarian governing party-in-waiting Fidesz said they would push for a revision of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) in 2011 to help tackle water scarcity and drought. EurActiv Hungary reports.

The European Environment Agency (EEA) wants the current climate change debate to focus on water efficiency at least as heavily as it does on energy efficiency and the energy performance of buildings. 

The numerous exemptions allowed from the Union's Water Framework Directive (WFD) are jeopardising the legislation's 'good water status' objective, warned a law professor speaking at a water management conference last week.

With water supplies under growing strain due to intensive use and climate change, the EU has introduced pricing policies to persuade users – farmers, industries and households – to save the precious resource. Meanwhile, pressure is growing to recognise access to safe drinking water and sanitation as a basic human right.

The Commission has rejected the notion that farmers should implement river basin management schemes in exchange for agricultural subsidies, despite increasing fears over water shortages and droughts.

The European Parliament's environment committee has reinstated a list of priority hazardous substances to be banned from water by 2025, putting it on a collision course with those EU member states which had already rejected the proposal a year ago.

The Commission has suspended a decision to bring France before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) after Paris adopted new measures to cut back the pollution of drinking water with nitrates in Brittany, ending a case which started in 2001.

Following another summer characterised by heat waves, forest fires and droughts, the Portuguese EU Presidency brings together Europe's environment ministers to discuss options for dealing with an increased frequency of droughts and water shortages, exacerbated by the effects of climate change. 

Remaining largely faithful to the Commission's original proposals, on 28 June 2007 EU environment ministers reached political agreement on substances in EU surface waters and on the issue of mercury storage and export restrictions, putting them on a collision course with Parliament, which had called for stricter EU standards.

On 22 May, the Parliament voted to substantially increase an existing list of toxic substances governed by EU laws on water quality. Parliament also voted to upgrade a number of these substances to a higher category of toxicity, which would require member states to phase-out their use entirely by 2015.

Directives on nitrate pollution from agriculture and urban wastewater are not properly implemented, which reduces the quality of European rivers and groundwater, the Commission warned in a series of reports, published on World Water Day.

EU water policies comprise a large body of legislation covering areas as diverse as flood management, bathing-water quality, chemicals in water, clean drinking water, groundwater protection and urban waste water. The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), adopted in 2000, was introduced to streamline the EU's large body of water legislation into one over-arching strategy.

Environment ministers from the 16 countries sharing the Danube river basin and Black Sea region have adopted a declaration to increase environmental co-operation in the area.

96% of Europe's coastal waters are clean enough for people to bathe in, says the Commission in its annual report published ahead of the bathing season. But some member states have been cheating, it warns.