EU Water Law

The European continent is made up of several million kilometres of flowing water and more than a million lakes. Europe is surrounded by nine sea basins. As shown by the overview published by the European Environment Agency (EEA) on its website, all these waters have their own characteristics and environmental problems: the climatic conditions of the catchment area, for example rain, bedrock geology and soil type all influence the water flow and the mineral content of the water; and human activity affects surface water and groundwater through afforestation, urbanisation, land drainage, pollutant discharge and flow regulation such as by dams and channelisation.

While the quality of river water across Europe has improved significantly thanks to a range of EU environmental legislation since the 1970s, pressures from agriculture, urbanisation, tourism and climate change suggest that guaranteeing water quality continue. Water quality is a complicated issue underlined by the influence of various pressures and multi-cause/multi-effect relationships and the many forms that pollution can take.

The EEA thus further notes that many organic pollutants, including sewage effluent as well as farm and food-processing wastes, consume oxygen, suffocating fish and other aquatic life. The largest sources of organic waste load are: household waste-water; industries such as paper industries or food processing industries; and occasionally silage effluents and slurry from agriculture. Increased industrial and agricultural production, coupled with a greater percentage of the population being connected to sewerage systems, initially resulted in increases in the discharge of organic waste into surface water. Over the past 15 to 30 years, however, the biological treatment of waste-water has increased, and organic discharges have consequently decreased throughout Europe. Concentrations of pollutants have decreased in European rivers in the period 1992 to 2004, corresponding to the general improvement in waste-water treatment.