Water is essential for human, animal and plant life and for the economy. Its protection and management transcend national boundaries. The EU’s water policy plays a crucial role in safeguarding the environment. There are laws designed to preserve water sources and both freshwater and marine ecosystems, and to guarantee the cleanliness of drinking and bathing water. The EU Water Framework Directive establishes a legal framework to protect and restore clean water and to ensure its long-term sustainable use.
Articles 191 to 193 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).
Water is not just a commercial product, but also a common good and a limited resource that needs to be protected and used in a sustainable way, in terms of both quality and quantity. It is, however, under pressure from various sectors, such as agriculture, industry, tourism, transport and energy.
In 1980, the first Drinking Water Directive (80/778/EEC) was introduced to streamline the national water-related requirements of the individual Member States and to combat unequal conditions for economic competition.
In 1992, the Water Convention, to which the EU is party, was adopted in Helsinki. It strengthens national measures and international cooperation for the ecological management and protection of cross-border surface waters and groundwater.
In 1997, the Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses established basic standards and rules for cooperation between watercourse states on the use, management and protection of international watercourses.
In 2012, the Commission launched the Blueprint to Safeguard Europe’s Water Resources, a long-term strategy that aims to ensure the availability of a sufficient level of quality water for all legitimate uses by better implementing current EU water policy, integrating water policy objectives into other policy areas and filling gaps in the current framework.
The overall objective of EU water policy is to ensure access to good quality water in sufficient quantities for all Europeans, economic sectors and the environment, and to ensure the good status of all bodies of water across Europe. However, due to climate change, the EU will increasingly face water-related extreme weather events, e.g. floods and droughts, so adopting policies to help mitigate and adapt to these issues is of the utmost importance.
To this end, EU policy has established two main legal frameworks for the protection and management of freshwater and marine resources: the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive.
A. Water Framework Directive and specific supporting water directives
The EU Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) establishes a framework for the protection of inland surface waters, transitional waters, coastal waters and groundwater. It aims to prevent and reduce pollution, promote sustainable water use, protect and improve the aquatic environment and mitigate the effects of floods and droughts. The overall objective is to achieve good environmental status for all waters. Member States are therefore requested to draw up river basin management plans based on natural geographical river basins, as well as specific programmes of measures to achieve the objectives.
A 2019 evaluation of the WFD concluded that it is broadly fit for purpose, but that its implementation needs to be sped up. As a result, in June 2020, the Commission announced that the WFD would not be changed, and it would instead focus on implementing and enforcing the current directive.
The WFD is supported by more targeted directives, which are outlined below.
B. EU coastal and marine policy
The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (2008/56/EC) is the environmental pillar of the EU’s integrated maritime policy, which was set up with a view to enhancing the sustainable development of its maritime economy while better protecting its marine environment. The objective of the directive was to achieve the good environmental status of the EU’s marine waters by 2020, to continue protecting and preserving them, and to prevent subsequent deterioration. It establishes European marine regions (the Baltic Sea, the North-east Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea) and sub-regions within the geographical boundaries of the existing Regional Sea Conventions. In order to achieve good environmental status by 2020, Member States had to develop ecosystem-based strategies for their marine waters, to be reviewed every six years. A regulation on integrated coastal zone management, moreover, defines the principles of sound coastal planning and management to be taken into account by the Member States.
The Commission adopted a report on the first implementation cycle of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive in June 2020. The new EU biodiversity strategy for 2030 (adopted in May 2020) aims to further strengthen the protection of marine ecosystems, including through the expansion of protected areas and the establishment of strictly protected areas for habitats and fish stocks recovery.
As regards ship-source pollution and penalties for infringements, Directive 2005/35/EC and its 2009 update aim to ensure that those responsible for polluting discharges at sea are subject to effective and dissuasive penalties.
The Erika oil spill disaster of 1999 prompted the EU to strengthen its role in the field of maritime safety and marine pollution with the establishment of the European Maritime Safety Agency in 2002. The agency is responsible for, among other tasks, preventing and responding to pollution caused by ships, as well as responding to marine pollution caused by oil and gas installations.
C. International agreements on regional waters
The protection of marine waters in Europe is governed by four international cooperation structures, known as Regional Sea Conventions, between the Member States and neighbouring countries sharing common waters: the OSPAR (Oslo and Paris) Convention of 1992 for the North-East Atlantic; the Helsinki Convention of 1992 on the Baltic Sea Area; the Barcelona Convention of 1995 for the Mediterranean; and the Bucharest Convention of 1992 for the Black Sea.
Interregional environmental cooperation focused on river basins or marine waters has led to the creation of several macro-regional strategies in the EU, i.e. strategies to address common challenges faced by a defined geographical area, such as the 2009 Baltic Sea region strategy, the 2011 strategy for the Danube region and the 2014 strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian region.
The first ever European Citizens’ Initiative, ‘Right2Water’ (2013), urged the EU institutions and the Member States to ensure that all citizens enjoy the right to water and sanitation, that water supply and the management of water resources are not subject to internal market rules and that water services are excluded from liberalisation measures. In 2015, in response to this European Citizens’ Initiative, Parliament, by a large majority, called on the Commission to come forward with legislation implementing the human right to water and sanitation as recognised by the United Nations, and, if appropriate, a revision of the WFD that would recognise universal access and the human right to water.
Underlining the necessary transition to a circular economy, Parliament supported plans to promote water reuse for agricultural irrigation. As a first step, Parliament, along with the Council, adopted a regulation on water reuse that entered into force in June 2023. In the same vein, it endorsed plans to improve the quality of tap water so as to reduce the use of plastic bottles.
In its 2018 resolution on international ocean governance, Parliament ‘emphasises that creating a sustainable maritime economy and reducing pressures on the marine environment require action on climate change, land-based pollution reaching the seas and oceans, marine pollution and eutrophication, on the preservation, conservation and restoration of marine ecosystems and biodiversity, and on the sustainable use of marine resources’. In this context, it ‘urges the Commission to support international efforts to protect marine biodiversity, in particular in the framework of the ongoing negotiations for a new legally binding instrument for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction’ and ‘calls on the Commission to propose more stringent legislation in order to preserve and ensure sustainable uses of marine biodiversity in areas under the jurisdiction of the Member States’.
In its resolution of March 2021 on marine litter, Parliament drew attention to the impact of marine litter on the marine ecosystem, the fisheries industry and consumers, and called for more restrictions on single-use plastics and the use of specially designed, sustainable materials for fishing gear.
In October 2022, Parliament adopted a resolution entitled ‘Access to water as a human right – the external dimension’, in which it reaffirmed ‘the right to safe drinking water and sanitation as a human right’ and called for the protection and restoration of natural ecosystems and the preservation of water for energy use.
Christian Kurrer / Alyssia Petit