EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Brussels, 26.2.2019

SWD(2019) 30 final

COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT

European Overview - River Basin Management Plans

Accompanying the document

REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL

implementation of the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) and the Floods Directive (2007/60/EC)
Second River Basin Management Plans
First Flood Risk Management Plans

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Table of Contents

Acronyms

Executive summary

1.Introduction

2.Main elements of the WFD

3.Approach to the assessment of the River Basin Management Plans

4.Overview Of Activities To Ensure Better Implementation

4.1.Legal action

4.2.Court rulings related to the WFD

4.3.Better national implementation: working with Member States and stakeholders

4.4.Legal implementation of related Directives adopted in accordance with Article 16 (EQSs) and 17 (Groundwater) of the WFD

5.Results of the assessment at EU level and recommendations

5.1.Governance

5.1.1.Introduction

5.1.2.Conclusions

5.1.3.Recommendations

5.2.Characterisation of the River Basin District

5.2.1.Introduction

5.2.2.Conclusions

5.2.3.Recommendations

5.3.Monitoring, assessment and classification of ecological status in surface waters

5.3.1.Introduction

5.3.2.Conclusions

5.3.3.Recommendations

5.4.Monitoring, assessment and classification of chemical status in surface waters

5.4.1.Introduction

5.4.2.Conclusions

5.4.3.Recommendations

5.5.Monitoring, assessment and classification of quantitative status in groundwater

5.5.1.Introduction

5.5.2.Conclusions

5.5.3.Recommendations

5.6.Monitoring, assessment and classification of chemical status in groundwater

5.6.1.Introduction

5.6.2.Conclusions

5.6.3.Recommendations

5.7.Designation of HMWBs and AWBs and definition of GEP

5.7.1.Introduction

5.7.2.Conclusions

5.7.3.Recommendations

5.8.Environmental Objectives and Exemptions

5.8.1.Introduction

5.8.2.Conclusions

5.8.3.Recommendations

5.9.Programme of measures – general & measures related to other significant pressures

5.9.1.Introduction

5.9.2.Conclusions

5.9.3.Recommendations

5.10.Measures related to abstractions and water scarcity

5.10.1.Introduction

5.10.2.Conclusions

5.10.3.Recommendations

5.11.Measures related to pollution from agriculture

5.11.1.Introduction

5.11.2.Conclusions

5.11.3.Recommendations

5.12.Measures related to pollution (including nutrients, organic matter and chemicals) from sectors other than agriculture

5.12.1.Introduction

5.12.2.Conclusions

5.12.3.Recommendations

5.13.Measures related to hydro-morphological alterations

5.13.1.Introduction

5.13.2.Conclusions

5.13.3.Recommendations

5.14.Economic analysis and water pricing policies

5.14.1.Introduction

5.14.2.Conclusions

5.14.3.Recommendations

5.15.Protected Areas

5.15.1.Introduction

5.15.3.Conclusions

5.15.3.Recommendations

5.16.Adaptation to climate change and drought

Introduction

5.16.2.Conclusions

5.16.3.Recommendations

6.International cooperation under the EU Directive 2000/60/EC establishing a framework for the Community action in the field of water policy

6.1.Introduction

6.1.1.International river basin districts and their coordination mechanisms

6.1.2. Selection of iRBDs for the assessment

6.2.Overview of International Cooperation

6.2.1.International coordination mechanisms

6.2.2.International coordination on characterisation, monitoring and status assessment

6.2.3.International coordination on exemptions and economic analysis

6.2.4.International coordination on Programme of Measures

6.2.5.International coordination on Climate change and droughts

6.3.Recommendations for international cooperation under the WFD

Acronyms

Executive summary

EU water policy has delivered significant improvements to water quality over the past four decades. Thanks to EU water law and the implementation efforts of Member States, supported by EU funding, it is increasingly possible to reconcile life in a densely populated continent, and a growing economy, with a progressive improvement of water quality. There are still significant pressures on water quality and quantity, but an effective approach to mitigate or eliminate these pressures has been chosen. Vigilance in intensification and implementation of efforts will however be needed throughout the EU to achieve the objectives of the Water Framework Directive (WFD).

EU Member States reported their second River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs) for the period 2015-2021 to the European Commission under the WFD as of March 2016; in some cases with significant delays. The Commission's analysis has therefore not covered the most delayed RBMPs, which were not adopted and reported on time to be part of this assessment, i.e. Greece, Ireland and Lithuania 1 .

This assessment of all RBMPs covers more than 111 000 surface water bodies and more than 13 000 groundwater bodies. The Commission focused on developments compared to its analysis of the first RBMPs (covering the period 2009-2015) in the main areas of integrated water management. The Commission’s analysis highlights progress and identifies remaining challenges. This assessment includes the international river basins.

Governance

Appropriate governance of water quality management at the river basin level is an essential precondition for achieving the WFD objectives. For the second RBMPs, many Member States have strengthened coordination among the responsible authorities. They have also made considerable efforts to improve public consultation and strengthen the active involvement of stakeholders. Information and views provided by stakeholders have led to changes to the draft RBMPs across the whole EU. The majority of Member States have carried out joint consultations of the second RBMPs with the Flood Risk Management Plans (FRMPs) but fewer have carried out joint consultations with the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), or incorporated MSFD objectives in their RBMPs. International cooperation has overall further improved in the second cycle.

Characterisation of river basin districts

Article 5 of the WFD requires Member States to undertake an analysis of the characteristics of each RBD or portion of an international RBD falling within their territory. This analysis had to be reviewed by the end of 2013 as the basis for the second RBMPs. Member States had to review the general description of the characteristics of their RBDs within the RBMPs, the definition of all relevant categories and types of water bodies (delineation) and the identification of the pressures and impacts on water status. For the EU overall, the delineation of about 90% of the surface water bodies (by number of water bodies) and around 70% of the groundwater bodies (by area) was unchanged from the first to the second RBMPs. Progress has been made since the first RBMPs in the establishment of reference conditions, however gaps still remain, as in most Member States, reference conditions have not been established for all water body types (rivers, lakes, transitional and costal) and for all quality elements and for all quality elements. A few Member States have established all reference conditions, including Austria, Hungary and Poland. The quality elements whose type-specific reference conditions showed the most significant gaps for surface water body types were found to be the hydro-morphological ones, as most Member States established reference conditions only for some water categories, and 8 Member States did not establish reference conditions for any water category (including Denmark, Finland, France, Croatia, Italy, Latvia and Malta).

Even if there is better knowledge on the significant pressures which may put water bodies at risk of failing the objectives, significant gaps remain, which will need to be addressed in the current cycle, particularly in defining thresholds and criteria for significance and impact. Further work is also required by Member States on apportioning pressures to sectors and activities to design more targeted measures.

For the second RBMPs, almost all River Basin Districts (RBDs) have reported inventories for at least some Priority Substances 2 . Some Members States have included all Priority Substances, including Austria, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Latvia and Slovenia. In many cases, justification was provided for not including the missing Substances in the inventories. In some Member States, less than 10 substances have been included in the inventories, this is the case for Bulgaria, Croatia, Malta, Sweden and Slovakia. Few Member States have complete inventories for discharges, emissions and losses of such harmful substances. Furthermore, the inventories are mainly based on point sources while diffuse source inputs are insufficiently addressed.

Monitoring and assessment of ecological status of surface water bodies

The WFD requires Member States to establish monitoring programmes for the assessment of the status of surface and groundwater to provide a coherent and comprehensive overview of water status within each RBD. Member States have to establish a surveillance monitoring programme and an operational monitoring programme. They may also need in some cases to establish programmes of investigative monitoring.

In the second RBMPs, for almost all water bodies it has been possible to establish their status, reducing much of the uncertainty found in the previous cycle. This is the case even if there have been some significant changes, both increases and decreases, in the number of monitoring sites and in the proportion of surface water bodies included in monitoring used for the second RBMPs compared to the first. These changes partially relate to the revised characterisation of water bodies between the first and second plans.

There are still significant gaps in the biological and hydro-morphological quality elements required to be monitored in each water category. This is particularly so for the hydro-morphological quality elements, which are not monitored at all in the Czech Republic and Croatia, only to a limited extent in Bulgaria, Portugal and France, and show significant gaps in practically all Member States. Significant gaps also persist in the monitoring of biological quality elements.

Environmental Quality Standards (EQSs) for RBSPs have not always been derived in accordance with the Technical Guidance 3 developed under the Common Implementation Strategy 4 . This is the case for the Czech Republic, Finland, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta and Poland, and, to a large extent, Spain. Furthermore, the analytical methods used for some RBSPs did not correspond to the requirements of the relevant Commission Directive 5 . This is particularly the case of Malta, for which none of the analytical methods were in line with the requirements.

Annex V of the WFD establishes the classification for ecological status (and ecological potential, for heavily modified water bodies and artificial water bodies), which is an expression of the quality of the structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems associated with surface waters. The overall ecological status/potential has not improved since the first RBMPs. Overall, there is a much better understanding of the situation of water bodies and the proportion of water bodies with unknown ecological status/potential has decreased significantly since the first cycle. The overall confidence in the classification has improved in the second RBMPs compared to the first, mainly due to better designed monitoring networks and improved availability and quality of the information for the status assessment methods.

There has been progress in the development of biological assessment methods since the first RBMPs. However some Member States, such as Austria, The Netherlands and Romania, have not reported methods sensitive to chemical pollution, although chemical pollution had already been reported in the first cycle as having a significant impact in those Member States. Hydro-morphological quality elements are not assessed in the Czech Republic, Denmark and The Netherlands, while in many other cases this concerns some hydro-morphological quality elements for some water types, particularly for coastal waters.

The ‘one-out all-out’ principle is a key principle that reflects the integrated approach on which the WFD is based. The overall status is only ‘good’ if all the elements comprised are at least considered ‘good’. This ensures that all pressures capable of degrading the water status are addressed. All 147 RBDs with reported information except Madeira, in Portugal, indicated that the one-out-all-out principle had been applied in the second RBMPs.

Monitoring and assessment of chemical status of surface water bodies

The WFD objective of achieving good surface water chemical status means that concentrations of pollutants cannot exceed the environmental quality standards established in the Environmental Quality Standards Directive 6 .

Overall, the percentage of water bodies that are of unknown chemical status has decreased significantly since the first RBMPs from 39 % of all surface water bodies to only 16 %. This indicates that the monitoring (spatially, substances and frequency) and status assessment methods have improved overall. A limited number of Member states have more than 60% of their water bodies in unknown status (Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Portugal).

Against a background of little change overall in the proportion of water bodies achieving good status and an increase in the proportion failing to achieve good status (most likely due to an increase in knowledge), several cases of improvements between the first and second RBMPs were reported for particular Priority Substances.

Grouping techniques and expert judgement have been widely used to classify water bodies. Some RBMPs provide information on the approaches used. The use of these may also be at least partly linked to the reduced confidence in the assessment of status. The range of confidence levels varies widely between Member States. This may result from various factors, including differences in the methodologies to assess the level of confidence.

Although it is not expected that all water bodies be monitored, the monitoring undertaken should be sufficient to obtain a reliable and robust assessment of the chemical status of all water bodies in the RBD, and should allow Member States to assess the effectiveness of the measures implemented to reach good status. The WFD also requires Member States to monitor all discharged priority substances.

Overall the extent of monitoring of Priority Substances across the EU has been very diverse, which tends to reflect differences in population density and intensity of pressures between Member States but also different strategies for monitoring.

Generally, the spatial extent of monitoring in water was limited in terms of the proportion of water bodies monitored with some variation between water categories. Some Member States (Slovenia, Malta and Belgium) however monitored at least some priority substances in more than 80% of their surface water bodies. The majority of Member States monitor all of their water bodies failing to achieve good status as part of their operational monitoring programmes in at least some of their RBDs and most commonly in coastal and transitional waters.

For status assessment, all Member States monitored Priority Substances in water. Nearly three quarters of Member States monitored mercury, hexachlorobenzene and/or hexachlorobutadiene in biota in at least some RBDs for status assessment, even if they generally (also) monitored in water in the same and other RBDs.

Relatively few chemical pollutants have individually a large impact on status. These include certain metals (cadmium, nickel, lead) and several ubiquitous, persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic substances, such as mercury 7 , which is involved in by far the largest number of failures to meet good chemical status. As regards measures against mercury pollution, a new Mercury Regulation 8 , applicable since 1 January 2018, seeks to limit further mercury use and emissions by, inter alia, regulating trade in mercury and mercury compounds and improving the management of mercury waste. The atmospheric deposition onto EU surface waters of mercury from non-EU sources – a significant source of pollution - is expected to decrease in the decades to come, following the entry into force, since August 2017, of the Minamata Convention on Mercury 9 , already ratified by over 100 countries, including major global players.

The majority of Member States monitored all of the Priority Substances identified as discharged into their RBDs with the exception of a few Priority Substances and with some variation among RBDs within Member States. Although significant efforts have been made to establish inventories of emissions, few Member States reported complete inventories for all their RBDs, and it is therefore unclear whether all discharged substances have been identified. In some cases (eg Cyprus, Slovenia), all substances were included in the inventories, and all discharged substances were monitored.

For trend assessment, around two-thirds of Member States reported that arrangements were in place for long-term trend analysis in most, but not all, RBDs. All but two of these monitored sediment and/or biota for this reason. Most Member States monitored the majority of the 14 substances though not in all RBDs and not in all water categories. Some Member States (including Hungary, Bulgaria, Czech Republic) did not report any trend monitoring in any of their RBDs.

According to Article 4 of the Directive 2008/105/EC Member States may designate mixing zones adjacent to points of discharge. Concentrations of one or more substances may exceed the relevant EQS within such mixing zones if they do not affect the compliance of the rest of the surface water body with those standards. Just over a quarter of Member States designated mixing zones in at least some RBDs, in a small portion of water bodies overall.

The EQSD allows Member States to take into account the natural background concentrations and bioavailability for metals and their compounds when assessing the monitoring results against the EQS. Most Member States have used this possibility (sometimes only in some RBDs within a Member State).

Monitoring and assessment of groundwater quantitative status

The groundwater quantitative monitoring network has to include sufficient representative monitoring points to estimate groundwater level in each groundwater body or group of bodies taking into account short and long-term variations in recharge. Overall, groundwater quantitative monitoring improved since the first RBMPs with increasing coverage of groundwater bodies. Most Member States increased the coverage of groundwater bodies by quantitative monitoring or at least kept the coverage at high level (decreases were observed in Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Romania). Nevertheless, a significant number of groundwater bodies (around 65%) are still without quantitative monitoring sites in specific Member States and the partially reported grouping of groundwater bodies for monitoring purposes does not fully explain the absence of monitoring.

The definition of quantitative status is set out in WFD Annex V (2.1.2). Good groundwater quantitative status is achieved when the level of groundwater in the groundwater body is such that the available groundwater resource is not exceeded by the long term annual average rate of abstraction. The groundwater quantitative status situation improved with 92% of the groundwater bodies representing 89% of the total groundwater body area being at good status. Most of the changes in status are due to the significant re-delineations of groundwater bodies better targeting the groundwater bodies at risk and improved status assessment methodologies. Next to the improvement of status, also knowledge improved, which is expressed in the decreased share of groundwater bodies at unknown status (3% of groundwater bodies representing 1% of the area) and the increased confidence in the status results which is high or medium for about 48% respectively 22% of the groundwater bodies.

The WFD requires for the characterisation of RBDs that Member States estimate and identify the impact of significant water flow regulation, including water transfer and diversion, on overall flow characteristics and water balances. Water balance is almost fully considered in status assessment. Also associated surface water bodies and groundwater dependent terrestrial ecosystems are fully considered in almost all Member States where such ecosystems exist and where they are related to groundwater quantitative risk. This is a significant improvement since the previous RBMPs.

Monitoring and assessment of groundwater chemical status

The surveillance monitoring of chemical status of groundwater needs to be carried out to supplement and validate the impact assessment procedure and provide information for use in the assessment of long-term trends, both as a result of changes in natural conditions and through anthropogenic activity. Sufficient monitoring sites should be selected for bodies identified as being at risk and for bodies which cross a Member State border.

The definition of chemical status is set out in WFD Annex V (2.3.2). Good groundwater chemical status is achieved when there is no saline intrusion, monitoring data do not show exceedance of relevant standards and groundwater concentrations do not result in status failure of associated surface waters, nor in any significant diminution of their ecological or chemical quality, nor in any significant damage to terrestrial ecosystems which directly depend on the groundwater body.

Most groundwater bodies have been assessed, and for only very few the chemical status is unknown. Overall, the confidence in the status results is relatively high. As explained above, some of the changes in the chemical status of groundwaters are also due to the reported redelineation of a significant number of groundwater bodies, improvements of the status assessment methods and changed threshold values. Therefore, comparison between both reporting cycles need to be done with caution.

About 84% of groundwater bodies (representing 74% of the total groundwater body area) in good groundwater chemical status. The overall chemical status of groundwater bodies improved only very little since the first cycle 10 . Also the reported expected achievement of good status for most of the groundwater bodies by 2027 or beyond 2027 demonstrates the long time-lag between the implementation of measures and their effectiveness in groundwater.

The consideration of groundwater associated aquatic and groundwater dependent terrestrial ecosystems improved significantly. In almost all Member States such ecosystems were identified and commonly considered in status assessment if risk was related to them.

Overall, groundwater chemical monitoring did not improve since the first RBMPs. Six Member States (Slovenia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Estonia and Croatia) have now full coverage of groundwater bodies by surveillance monitoring. On the contrary a few Member States (e.g. Spain, the United Kingdom)reduced the coverage of groundwater bodies by surveillance monitoring while some others have still limited coverage of groundwater bodies (e.g. Finland, Sweden, Denmark). A significant number of groundwater bodies is still without chemical monitoring sites and the partially reported grouping of groundwater bodies for monitoring purposes does not fully justify the absence of monitoring. Not all groundwater bodies which were identified at risk of failing good chemical status are subject to operational monitoring and also not all substances causing risk are fully covered. As with surveillance monitoring the partially reported grouping of groundwater bodies cannot completely justify the absence of operational monitoring.

Designation of Heavily Modified Water Bodies and definition of Good Ecological Potential 

According to the WFD Article 4(3)(a) and (b), Member States may designate a water body as heavily modified if the changes to the hydro-morphological characteristics of that body which would be necessary for achieving GES would have significant adverse effects on the use, and the beneficial objectives served by modified characteristics of the water body cannot, for reasons of technical feasibility or disproportionate costs, reasonably be achieved by other means, which are a significantly better environmental option.

At EU level, the extent of designated Heavily Modified Water Bodies (HMWBs) and Artificial Water Bodies (AWBs) has remained similar to the first RBMPs: approximately 13% of European surface water bodies are designated as HMWB and 4% as AWB. The extent of designation varies across Member States, with some States designating more than 30% of their water bodies as heavily modified (Hungary, Malta, Germany and the Netherlands), while other States designate less than 5% of their water bodies as heavily modified (Finland and Sweden).

A methodology for designating HMWB is described for the RBMPs of all Member States, with few exceptions such as Croatia, where a consistent description of the method is missing.

In some countries (e.g. in Denmark, Sweden, Slovakia), assessments to complete the designation of HMWB and AWB are still ongoing and further changes to the extent of designation may take place during the second cycle.

Most Member State methodologies address the definition of “substantial changes in character” in order to consider a water body for designation as HMWB and report relevant criteria. Descriptions of how to assess significant adverse effects of restoration measures on the use or wider environment and how to assess other means which are better environmental options were assessed in detail in about two thirds of the Member States, but not done in particular for the Czech Republic, Germany and Croatia. Only few Member States provide information on specific criteria used to assess significant adverse effects of restoration measures, such as Austria, and the criteria reported are mainly of qualitative nature, similar to the first RBMPs.

The status of HMWB and AWB needs to be assessed in terms of achieving at least Good Ecological Potential (GEP) as this is defined in Annex V of the Directive. This refers to the best approximation to the best status which could be achieved, given the hydro-morphological characteristics that cannot be changed without significant adverse effects on the specified use or the wider environment. As regards the definition of Good Ecological Potential (GEP) some improvements have been noted in relation to the methodology, which will allow for easier tracking of progress. In the second RBMPs, GEP is reported as defined (or partly defined) in the majority of Member States. Methodological improvements for the establishment of GEP are reported by a number of countries, while in some, new national methods have been developed since the first cycle. One of the key improvements since the first RBMPs is the inclusion of more biological quality elements in the definition of GEP. In most Member States, the establishment of values of biological quality elements for GEP is based on assessment methods similar to those used for good ecological status (GES) of natural water bodies, but often using lower thresholds to distinguish between classes of “good” and “moderate”. Mitigation measures for defining GEP are reported in most Member States. However, the level of information provided on the ecological changes that the measures are designed to achieve remains very limited, indicating little progress in this respect since the first RBMPs.

Environmental objectives and exemptions

The exemptions foreseen in Article 4 11 of the Directive are still used extensively, with around half of Europe’s water bodies currently under an exemption, to a greater extent for surface waters than for groundwaters. Exemptions under Article 4(4) are still used to a significant extent in all Member States. For surface waters, technical feasibility, natural conditions and disproportionate costs are used as justifications. For groundwater bodies, mainly natural conditions and technical feasibility are used to justify these exemptions, with technical feasibility used more often than natural conditions. Article 4(5) exemptions have been applied more often in the second cycle than in the first in several Member States.

The justifications provided in the second RBMPs for exemptions under Article 4(4) and 4(5) are more detailed and more consistently reported on water body level compared to the first cycle, when in many cases justifications were very general and it was often unclear when the environmental objectives were expected to be reached (under Article 4(4)). However, justifications are in many cases still very generic. Technical feasibility under Article 4(4) and technical ‘infeasibility’ in relation to Article 4(5) needs to be substantially improved and made more transparent in most of the RBMPs. Also, the justifications for disproportionate costs under Article 4(4) and Article 4(5) should be better distinguished. A few Member States have applied Article 4(6) exemptions due to prolonged droughts, such as Spain and in the Netherlands. In Portugal a potential use of this exemption is referred to in the RBMPs.

The application of Article 4(7) has increased in the second RBMPs. It can be concluded that more projects are in the pipeline and more cases of Article 4(7) application may occur in the future. Some progress has been made in terms of methodologies to assess impacts on the status of water bodies. The assessment of cumulative effects, though, remains a challenge. Information on how to determine overriding public interest is limited and it is not clear to which extent public consultations have taken place. The newly developed CIS guidance document on Article 4(7) of December 2017 provides important clarifications and is expected to further improve Article 4(7) related assessments and reporting for the next RBMPs.

The fact that exemptions are so widely used is an indicator of the significant efforts needed from Member States to achieve good status or good potential by 2027. However, and in line with what is required by that same Article, Member States need to better ensure that the exemptions applied for one water body do not permanently exclude or compromise the achievement of the environmental objectives in other water bodies (Article 4(8)), and guarantee at least the level of protection provided for in other EU environmental law (Article 4(9)).

PROGRAMMES OF MEASURES (PoMs)

General

Whilst progress has been made in implementing the first programmes of measures (PoMs), these PoMs have not been fully implemented. A lack of adequate finance is likely to continue to present an obstacle also to implementing the second PoMs as no less than 64 % of RBDs have yet to secure finance for all relevant sectors.

Most Member States have made some progress in identifying the gap to good status for each significant pressure, and the level of implementation of measures required to achieve good status. This is a significant improvement that will allow for better identification and prioritisation of the measures. However, more work is needed to refine this for the third PoMs.

Not all Member States have reported other significant pressures. It is not clear whether this is because they are not relevant or because they have not assessed them. For those Member States that have identified other pressures, measures are in place to address them, the gap to good status has generally been identified, and indicators developed to identify the level of implementation required to achieve good status.

Measures to tackle main pressures on water bodies

A. Abstractions and water scarcity

More than 7 600 (7%) of Europe’s surface water bodies are affected by significant water abstraction pressures and 16% of the area of groundwater bodies is affected by over-abstraction. Basic and supplementary measures are in place in most of the RBDs concerned with water scarcity. However, progress in reducing pressures is slow.

Some Member States still need progress in fulfilling previous recommendations to improve water scarcity management (Spain, Portugal, Italy, Malta, Sweden, Slovenia). However, relevant action in extending metering, water abstraction controls and reviewing licenses has been found in some Member States (Cyprus, Hungary, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, United Kingdom), while in others water abstraction datasets have improved. In most Member States, small abstractions are exempted from controls and/or registering, despite the fact that water bodies suffering from significant abstraction pressures are not achieving good status.

B. Pollution from agriculture

Agriculture is a major driver of failure of good chemical status to EU groundwater and surface waters, mainly due to diffuse pollution by nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) and pesticides. Water abstraction for agriculture is the main significant pressure, among others, causing failure of good quantitative status of groundwater bodies. The biggest challenges in addressing the poor quality of water related to agricultural activities were found in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, Croatia, Hungary, Poland and the United Kingdom.

About half of the Member States, which reported on their RBMPs, have carried out a gap assessment in relation to agricultural pressures in order to identify the efforts needed to reach the WFD targets.

Basic measures under Article 11(3)(h) 12 , to tackle diffuse pollution, are reported for all assessed Member States, but not for all RBDs and not for all diffuse pollutants. Furthermore, many of the supplementary measures in the second cycle programmes of measures are voluntary. The voluntary nature of measures could be a limiting factor if their uptake by farmers remains low. Most Member States have defined, or are in the process of defining, specific zones including specific water protection measures to avoid pollution to drinking water from agriculture.

Engagement with farmers seems to have increased, as most Member States report having consulted with farmers or farmers associations when setting up the programmes of measures. However, few Member States report the provision of advisory support services for farmers on measures implementation.

C. Pollution from other sectors (including nutrients, organic matter and chemicals)

Basic measures to reduce pollution from non-agricultural sources, such as an authorisation and/or permitting regime to control wastewater point source discharges, the operation of registers of wastewater discharges, and the prohibition or limitation of all direct discharges to groundwater, and/or other measures to eliminate / reduce pollution from priority substances and other substances, are in place in most of the Member States.

The number of Member States identifying substance-specific measures in their second RBMPs is significantly higher than the number which did so in their first RBMPs, although even where Member States have identified such measures, the coverage of substances causing failure is not always complete.

Measures have generally been reported in relation to failure of good status, but not in relation to phasing out the emissions of priority hazardous substances in RBDs where failure has not been observed.

D. Hydro-morphological alterations

The majority of Member States, with few exceptions (Croatia, Malta, Romania, French overseas RBDs), have reported operational Key Types of Measures (KTMs) to address significant hydro-morphological pressures (fish ladders, removal of structures, etc.). In the second RBMPs, information on the links between measures, hydro-morphological pressures and water uses/sectors has substantially improved. In some Member States, such as in Austria and Sweden, there will be small to medium progress in terms of closing the gap for hydro-morphological pressures by 2021, and the main progress is expected between 2021 and 2027. In other Member States, the information reported indicates that no or very little progress is expected in closing the gap for significant hydro-morphological pressures between 2015 and 2021, or this information has not been reported, such as in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, Finland, Luxembourg, Latvia.

Establishing ecologically based flow regimes is an important hydro-morphological measure since to have a sufficient ecological flow regime is a prerequisite to reach good ecological status in rivers and it is crucial to maintain a flow throughout the river continuum. In most Member States, the work on defining and implementing ecological flows is still ongoing in the second cycle. The ecological flow has been reported as fully defined and implemented in Hungary and the Netherlands.

E. Cross-cutting measures requiring improved implementation

Economic analysis and water pricing policies

The WFD promotes the application of sound economic principles 13 , methods and instruments for supporting the achievement of its objectives in the EU, including incentive pricing, cost recovery and the application of the polluter pays principle.

The exante conditionality for water under the Common Provisions Regulation for the European Structural and Investment Funds for the period 2014-2020 has facilitated the preparation, timely adoption and reporting of several of the RBMPs. It also incited a number of Member States to address shortcomings in the implementation of the WFD, including by upgrading their water pricing policies, thereby improving the quality and legality of relevant investments 14 .

Despite these efforts, still more progress is needed in implementing the changes to water pricing policies. In particular, the incomplete implementation of the principle of cost recovery and the limited use of economic instruments put a strain on the potential of promoting efficient water management through this instrument. In many cases methodologies to calculate costs are insufficiently documented and essential information is missing. A significant number of Member States has widened the definition of water services to include water use activities that have a significant impact on water bodies, such as for example hydropower generation, navigation and flood protection, or self-abstraction for irrigation and industrial purposes. In Latvia, for example, a broad definition of water services has been used, and cost recovery rates are presented for all these services.

In Hungary and Slovakia, for example, pricing policies have been modified to increase cost recovery in agriculture. At the same time the application of Article 9.4 15 , which provides the possibility not to apply the principle of cost recovery to certain water services, varies across Member States, and also across RBDs in the same Member State.

Considerable work is reported by all Member States calculating financial costs of water services; nevertheless; the transparency of the calculation methods could be further improved. Environmental and resource costs are treated more specifically in this second cycle. There are evident efforts to calculate these costs and more information is available on methodologies and approaches, next to more transparency on whether these costs have been internalized or not. Nevertheless significant gaps remain and there is room to improve the transparency on how these costs have been dealt with. Overall, limited changes in the water-pricing policies have taken place in order to implement the Article 9 provisions.

Protected areas

The 'additional measures in protected areas' refer to those measures needed to achieve more stringent objectives than good status required by Article 4 of the WFD. More stringent objectives are those that have been set out in in relevant EU law under which the individual protected areas have been established.

Reporting of monitoring specifically targeted towards protected areas, including for shellfish, is very limited – in certain countries even missing. Especially regarding groundwater (both for drinking water, but also for groundwater dependent habitats and species), the gap between the actual level of reported and needed monitoring is large. Specific objectives have only been set for a limited number of protected areas and for a considerable part of water bodies with a specific objective, the more stringent objectives are already met, meaning that no further effort is needed.

The evaluation of the Drinking Water Directive (DWD) 16 assessed the coherence with the WFD and identified a missing link in the DWD as regards protecting drinking water resources. Therefore, the 2018 proposal for a recast of the DWD is introducing a risk based approach from abstraction to tap, and improving communication between Member States’ authorities and water suppliers to ensure there is a full governance cycle for water. The proposal aims to improve coherence between the two Directives and ensure that the polluter pays principle and the precautionary principles both apply.

For nearly half the protected areas related to the Habitats and Birds Directives, no objectives have been set, because the additional needs for improvement are not yet known. Furthermore, for a significant part of the water bodies related to protected areas, GES is reported as sufficient also to reach the more stringent objectives according to other Directives. Therefore, the need for additional measures in protected areas can be described only for a very small number of water bodies. The second RBMPs will not bring significant progress in the status of protected areas, as the additional needs for setting specific water objectives for most of them are not yet known. This leaves a significant task for the third cycle for most Member States to live up to the requirements.

Adaptation to droughts and climate change

Only in about half of the Member States droughts were considered as a relevant feature for water management (e.g. Cyprus, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal).

The key management measure to mitigate drought impact although not explicitly mentioned in the Water Framework Directive, is a Drought Management Plan. However, the Drought Management Plan has not been adopted in all relevant RBDs. A few Member States have, however, progressed in their drought management since the first cycle by developing drought indicators and extending the number of RBDs with Drought Management Plans (Slovenia, United Kingdom). The adoption of elements within the RBMPs that address clearly the key elements for drought mitigation (indicators, measures, organisational set-up) can provide a step-wise approach.

Most Member States (e.g. Bulgaria, Germany, France, Italy, Slovakia) have reported that they have used the Common Implementation Guidance number 24 (“River Basin Management in a changing climate”), have done a climate proofing of the POMs and have a national Climate Change Strategy or Plan. However, the effectiveness of the climate proofing methodologies is unclear, and in general, green infrastructures and water retention measures are underused. Thus, it remains important that technical measures and planned infrastructures duly take into account climate change predictions, especially for the occurrence of extreme phenomena and changes in river flows.

International co-operation

Member States are obliged to coordinate their work under the WFD for each river basin that crosses national borders of EU countries. With non-EU countries they need to make reasonable efforts to coordinate. A large number of river basins is indeed international in the EU, including some very large ones like the basin of the Rhine and the Danube. The degree of cooperation differs from basin to basin. Usually, there is an international agreement in place, often also an international coordinating body and, in a more limited number of cases, a joint RBMP. Only a few international basins in the EU have none of these arrangements.

Overall, good progress has been made in the international coordination for shared river basins. Governance structures have been improved and further formalised, RBMPs have increasingly been developed and improved and comparability of findings improved as did compatibility of approaches developed in response to pressures. Generally, the stronger the governance of the basin and the more developed the RBMP, the better the results in terms of achieving WFD objectives.

1.Introduction

EU water policy has delivered significant improvements to water quality over the past four decades. Thanks to EU water legislation and the implementation efforts of Member States, we are increasingly able to reconcile life in a densily populated continent, with growing economies, with an improvement of water quality. There are still significant pressures on water quality and quantity, but an effective approach to mitigate or even eliminate these pressures has unmistakebly been chosen. Vigilance in implementation, and even intensification of efforts will however been needed throughout the EU to achieve the objectives of the WFD.

This Commission Staff Working Document is part of the Commission’s fifth implementation report 17 as required by Article 18 of the WFD and is based on the assessment of the RBMPs for the period 2015-2021 reported by Member States. The report describes the results of the assessment based on the information reported by Member States. The report also covers the requirements of Article 11 of the Groundwater Directive and Article 5 of the EQSs Directive.

This document is accompanied by Staff Working Documents describing the results of the assessment by the Commission of the RBMPs relating to each Member State that reported on time and provided its information through the Water Information System for Europe (WISE), as well as the international RBMPs. The report on of the European Environment Agency on the State of Water 2018 provides a detailed overview and analysis of actual progress in quality of Europe’s 80,000 water bodies.

This document covers 25 EU Member States 18 . Lithuania, Ireland and Greece are not covered due to late reporting to WISE. Spain and the UK are included except for the RBMPs of the Canary Islands 19 and Gibratar respectively.

2.Main elements of the WFD

The WFD introduced new and ambitious objectives to protect aquatic ecosystems in a more holistic way, considering all uses and users of water, and managing water on the scale of river basins. It introduced a number of key principles into the management and protection of aquatic resources:

(1)    The integrated planning process at the scale of river basins, from characterisation to the definition of measures to reach the environmental objectives.

(2)    A comprehensive assessment of pressures, impacts and status of the aquatic environment, including from the ecological perspective.

(3)    The economic analysis of the measures proposed/taken and the use of economic instruments.

(4)    The integrated water resources management principle encompassing targeting environmental objectives with water management and related policies objectives.

(5)    Public participation and active involvement in water management.

The key objective of the WFD is to achieve good status for all water bodies by 2015. This comprises the objectives of good ecological and good chemical status for surface waters and good quantitative and good chemical status for groundwater.

The key tool for the implementation of the WFD is the RBMP and the accompanying POMs. The planning process is a step-by-step procedure in which each step builds on the previous one. Each step is important, starting from the transposition and the administrative arrangements, followed by the characterisation of the RBD, the monitoring and the assessment of status, the setting of objectives, the establishment of an appropriate POMs and its implementation including the monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness of the measures supporting the following RBMP cycle.

The PoM is the tool designed to enable the Member States to respond appropriately to the relevant pressures identified at RBD level during the pressures and impacts analysis, with the objective of enabling the river basin/water body to reach good status. For example, if a significant pressure is overlooked during the pressures and impacts analysis, the monitoring programme may not be designed to assess the pressure, and the POMs may not envisage action to address it.

The RBMP is a comprehensive document describing the implementation of water management and identifying all actions to be taken in the RBD.

The first RBMPs started in 2009 and ended in 2015. The plans were expected to deliver the objectives of the WFD including non-deterioration of water status and the achievement of good status by 2015. The preparatory process for the plans has already been subject to two Commission implementation reports 20 , in 2007 and 2009. The Commission adopted its assessment of the first RMBPs in 2012, in the third implementation report while a fourth report, in 2015, covered the implementation of the planned Programmes of Measures that were due in 2012 21 .

Implementation of the WFD continues to be supported by an informal network of Member States, EEA/EFTA countries and stakeholders under the banner of the Common Implementation Strategy (CIS), led by Water Directors of Member States and the Commission. The CIS has successfully delivered a large number of guidance documents and is now increasingly turning to promoting better implementation through exchange of best practice and discussion of policy developments.

3.Approach to the assessment of the River Basin Management Plans

The RBMPs are comprehensive documents that cover many aspects of water management, consisting of hundreds to thousands of pages of information, published in national languages. The assessment of the RBMPs has been a very challenging and complex task that has involved dealing with extensive information in more than 20 languages. While the RMBPs are used as a basis for the Commission’s assessment, and the EEA State of Water report, they are primarily key management instruments for Member States.

In the frame of the CIS of the WFD Member States agreed that besides submitting their RBMPs to the Commission they would report pre-defined key information of their RBMPs electronically through the WISE; http://water.europa.eu ).  22 WISE is a web-portal entry to water related information ranging from inland waters to marine that helps streamlining reporting under different water related EU legislation and allows the different European bodies to more easily collect and share information as well as public access to water data and information reported by Member States. WISE has been improved over the last years and further investments are planned to create an even more user-friendly, shared environmental system, with amongst others better visualisation capacities.

The quality of the Commission assessments relies on the quality of the Member States' reports. Incomplete or deficient reporting can lead to wrong and/or incomplete assessments. It is recognised that reporting is a big effort for Member States, in particular the electronic reporting to WISE. There are examples of very good, high quality reporting. However, there are also cases where reporting contains gaps or contradictions.

In the context of the preparation of its assessment, the Commission maintained regular informal contact with the Member States to validate its findings and to ensure that the assessment reflects reality.

According to the WFD, the deadline for reporting was March 2016. Figure 4.1 presents the state of play regarding the adoption of the RBMPs 23 . 25 Member States have adopted and reported the RBMPs for their national parts of the RBDs.

Lithuania, Ireland, Greece and Gibraltar (UK) as well as Norway 24 have adopted their RBMPs but have not finished the reporting in WISE yet. In Spain, the seven plans for the Canary Islands have been adopted just before the publication of this document 25 . The reporting for Ireland was completed only some weeks before the adoption of this report.

 Figure 4.1: State of adoption of the RBMPs. GREEN - RBMPs adopted. RED - Consultation has not started or is on-going. YELLOW - Consultation closed, adoption pending.

Overall geographical scope of the RBMPs

There are 177 RBDs designated in the EU, of which 94 are international. The number of RBMPs adopted is 174. The geographical scope of the RBMPs does not correspond exactly to the number of RBDs, and a number of different models can be identified:

-Most Member States have prepared one RBMP for each RBD exclusively within their territory.

-Most Member States who have part of an international RBD within their territory have produced one RBMP for the national part of the international RBD. In some cases they have also reported international RBMPs produced for the whole international RBD. Where such international RBMPs are available, this can be seen as being a successful result of the implementation of the WFD.

-One Member State has prepared one plan covering all of their territory (but which includes sections on each of the relevant RBDs. In these cases, they have been counted as having prepared one RBMP per RBD.

-Some Member States have prepared several RBMPs for each RBD and for sub-basins. For instance, in Romania all of the territory falls within the Danube RBD and is covered by the Danube International RBMP (A-level), as well as by the national Romanian Danube RBMP (B-level). In addition, and fully in accordance with the Directive (Article 13.5 WFD), more detailed sub-RBMPs have been prepared for each of the 11 sub-basins. For the purpose of this assessment, the Romanian Danube RBMP has however been considered as one RBMP.

4.Overview Of Activities To Ensure Better Implementation

The Commission's recent Communication on "EU law: Better results through better implementation" 26 ("the EU law Communication") foresees that the Commission employs a wide variety of tools at its disposal to ensure better compliance with Union legislation. In the frame of the WFD such tools range from informal compliance promotion activities and a focus on working together with Member States on shared implementation challenges (notably in the context of the CIS) to more formal legal action (pilots, infringements, court cases).

0.0.Legal action

The Commission has pursued targeted legal action to enforce the WFD since the transposition deadline of 2003.

a)Brief history and priorities

Legal action initially focused on two main priorities 27 :

Enforcement of the deadlines: whenever a reporting deadline lapsed, the necessary legal steps were taken against those Member States which failed to respect those deadlines. For the WFD itself this concerned the following deadlines:

-2003: transposition

-2004: RBD delineation, competent authorities and administrative arrangements

-2007: adoption of the monitoring programmes

-2009: adoption of RBMPs (reporting deadline 22.3.2010)

-2015: adoption of updated RBMPs (reporting deadline 22.3.2016)

The Commission has prioritised these actions as they represent key milestones for the implementation of the Directive. For example, without the adoption of RBMPs, there is no plan for the effective implementation of the Directive on the ground, as well as the inclusion of a POMs to achieve environmental objectives. This has necessitated the Commission going to Court in the past (see below section on Court Cases).

Correct transposition: The Commission also pursued actions to address issues of non-conformity of the national legislation transposing the provisions related to the RBMPs with a view to ensuring that the national legal framework correctly reflects the different EU requirements for the WFD. Correct transposition has been highlighted as one of the key priorities for enforcement under the Commission's recent Communication referred to above.

Infringement proceedings for the most part have been closed with the Member States.This is not surprising given the fairly advanced stage of the WFD implementation process (update of RBMPs). However, a number of non-conformity cases concerning the WFD are pending.

The Commission, in view of the fact that correct transposition is considered a key priority for enforcement, will continue to stay alert for such issues as they affect the achievement of the objectives of the Directive. It is, therefore, important that Member States systematically communicate to the Commission changes to their national laws in the field governed by this Directive (Article 24(2) WFD).

Non-conformity cases are also taken up in relation to the related Directives adopted in accordance with Article 16 (EQSs) and 17 (Groundwater) of the WFD.

b)Bad application cases

A rather extensive number of so called 'bad application' infringement cases have been opened since 2003 in relation to the implementation of the WFD. Such cases have increased as time has progressed in the implementation of the Directive.

Bad application refers to the Commission's assessment that an infringement of EU law is not due to deficiencies in the legislative framework but due to non-respect by the authorities of that framework.

In general terms, bad application cases can be classed into three main categories:

I.failure to meet reporting requirements

In the past, reporting requirement cases have concerned the failure to report administrative arrangements (Article 3) or to submit the report on the characterisation of the RBDs (Article 5) as explained in the first implementation report. It concerns cases for failure to report monitoring networks (Article 8) as explained in the second implementation report.. Details in relation to these cases can be found in the 3rd implementation report of the Directive. 28  

The Commission has continued to follow its strict line in relation to the timely adoption and reporting of the updated RBMPs (reporting date: 22.3.2016). Numerous enquiries with Member State authorities and, when necessary, infringements were initiated. This has resulted in a far quicker uptake than in the previous cycle. Finally, the Commission will ensure timely reporting of the progress of delivering POMs under Art 15(3) WFD (by 22.12.2018). This is to ensure that Member States continue to deliver on their proposed measures to achieve environmental objectives.

II.Targeted follow-up to the assessment of RBMPs

In relation to its first RBMP assessment, the Commission has strived to identify important gaps in implementation and to highlight them to the Member State concerned, notably by recommendations. Such recommendations pertain normally to important issues highlighted in a given Member State (lack of measures to address important pressures such as diffuse pollution, issues concerning exemptions, monitoring, HMWB issues, governance).

These can be followed up with the Member State through bilateral dialogue. If action is not forthcoming then more formal legal action may be warranted. This can involve the opening of an investigation against the Member State or, if necessary, recourse to an infringement procedure.

On the basis of the first RBMP, 10 investigation procedures were initiated against different Member States of which 5 remain open. In one case, the matter was taken forward to infringement.

The second RBMP assessment will provide an opportunity to take stock of the steps taken by the Member States concerned and indeed whether there are other important issues that have arisen in the meantime and require follow-up.

III.Cases arising from complaints

There are also bad application cases arising pursuant to complaints. Citizens, non-governmental organisations, parliamentary questions and petitions can be a reliable source of information in relation to implementation challenges that can arise under complex environmental legislation such as the WFD.

The approach taken to complaints follows the Commission's recent communication on "Better Results through Better Application". 29 In general terms, the Commission aims to prioritise cases, taking due account of the Framework nature of the Directive and that in many instances national authorities are best placed to address the bulk of individual cases which often involve technical in nature. It is therefore necessary to focus on important issues that can make a difference to overall practice within that Member State.

Key complaints concern inter alia existing or future projects which may impact on water status (such as the construction of new hydropower facilities and works related to navigation which allegedly fail to give proper attention to the impact on the ecological and chemical status of the water) and existing or future activities which impact water (such as discharges of salt resulting from mining activities into fresh water negatively affecting water quality or the over-abstraction concerning water dependent protected areas which could have an impact on groundwater quantitative status, interpretation of key concepts such as "water services"). These complaints are all assessed individually and, where needed, the Commission enquires with the Member State authorities as a preliminary step towards formal enforcement action. In this context, it should be highlighted that the overall objective is to ensure better compliance with the Directive to maintain its levels of ambition which also reflects the high levels of ambition for the environment set in the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU.

Complaints sometimes invoke particular deficiencies in the RBMPs, such as that the measures proposed are not sufficient or that certain exemptions under Article 4 of the WFD are unlawfully invoked by the authorities. Where possible, complaints related to the RBMPs as such are pursued under the on-going assessment of the RBMPs by the Commission. Further information on infringements

The Commission publishes all infringement decisions undertaken. It also has produced press releases about the infringements and statistics for infringements in the entire environment policy domain.

0.1.Court rulings related to the WFD

The Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) has issued several rulings on the basis of the WFD. Initially, these cases dealt with provisions of the WFD which may be seen as straightforward (such as non-communication of the transposing measures, late reporting, late adoption of monitoring programmes and RBMPs). However, in recent years there have been numerous preliminary rulings on key concepts of the WFD as well as its interaction with horizontal environmental measures such as the Environmental Liability Directive and access to justice. There have also been a few enforcement cases under the WFD.

Relevant case law by the ECJ:

0.2.Better national implementation: working with Member States and stakeholders 

Member States have primary responsibility for ensuring the correct implementation and application of this Framework Directive. The Commission employs a number of tools to facilitate in this regard.

a)The Common Implementation Strategy

In this context, it should be noted that the Commission working jointly with the Member States and relevant stakeholders has developed a CIS 43 in order to facilitate a common understanding and approach which is crucial to the successful and effective implementation of the Directive.

This has played an important role with regard to best practice and thus better implementation on the ground. Apart from being a good forum on diverse subjects of WFD and related Directives' implementation, the CIS strategy has produced a substantial amount of best practice guidance (approximately 50) which should improve application by Member State authorities. 44 This assists with a strategy which is focused on prevention, rather than cure.

A recent noteworthy example was the substantial guidance produced in relation to Article 4(7) which should assist with ensuring better practice in relation to the permitting of projects, thus leading to improved compliance on the ground by national authorities. 45

The CIS also acts a forum for informed debate on various issues arising under the WFD umbrella and carries out a dedicated work-programme every few years. Further details concerning its work programme, key events and related documentation can be found online .

b)Integration – sectoral efforts

Effective implementation of water legislation cannot possibly be undertaken without the effective cooperation of key sectors which have major impacts on water bodies throughout the Union. This need to integrate water considerations into sectoral policy areas at all levels (including Commission, Member State authorities and relevant stakeholders) is a major challenge. Examples of sectors which do impact on water include agriculture, energy (hydropower), navigation and chemicals/pollution. The Commission also factors in water considerations into cohesion policy funding. For the 2014-2020 funding period, ex-ante conditionality was introduced to ensure a proper transposition and implementation of EU water legislation for investments in the water sector. This has proved to be a very useful tool in closing the relevant implementation gaps identified in the first River Basin Management Plans. It has been a driver for many Member States to implement improvements in areas such as pricing policies and to adopt the second generation of River Basin Management Plans. 46

c)Promoting networks

The Commission has also facilitated the development of networks composed of key stakeholders in order to increase public awareness of water issues and thus lead to better implementation on the ground. Two such examples are the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) 47 and the Urban Water Agenda 48 .

d)Implementation of horizontal legislation

EU environmental law also has developed numerous horizontal policies to improve uptake of environmental matters within Member States.

·Environmental Liability 49 - the Environmental Liability Directive establishes a framework based on the polluter pays principle to prevent and remedy environmental damage.

·Access to Justice 50 - notably the Aarhus Regulation which concerns the uptake of the Aarhus Convention in the Union and Member States. The Aarhus Regulation addresses the "three pillars" of the Aarhus Convention - access to information, public participation and access to justice in environmental matters - where those are of relevance to EU institutions and bodies and lays down related requirements. Such rules complement the existing public participation and consultation rules under the WFD. The Commission has also developed a recent Notice on Access to Justice in Environmental Matters 51 .

The implementation of such policies also benefits the implementation of the WFD. This has also been reflected in recent case law involving these respective policy areas in the context of the WFD. Reference is made to the preliminary rulings in the cases of Folk (Environmental Liability) and Protect Natur (access to justice) - see above section on relevant ECJ case-law.

e)Environmental Implementation Review (EIR)

The Commission has developed the Environmental Implementation Review (EIR) which can serve as a useful poltical forum to support the delivery of the objectives of existing EU environmental policies and legislation. 52 In the water area, the CIS and the EIR complement each other.

f)Compliance assurance

The Commission has recently placed greater emphasis upon the notion of compliance assurance. 53 In essence this covers three notions:

·Promote means helping businesses and others to comply;

·Monitor means using inspections and other checks to collect information about levels of compliance and provide solid evidence for enforcement;

·Enforce means stopping those who disregard the rules, sanctioning them and obliging them to rectify the damage.

The foregoing notions can well complement the CIS to achieve better implementation by Member State authorities themselves within the field of the WFD. For example, in the Commission Action Plan on environmental compliance and governance 54 , targeted action is foreseen to produce guidance on how to better ensure compliance in rural areas. This includes guidance for farmers and Member State authorities can ensure better practice in relation to EU water law in rural areas. This is of importance given the impact of agriculture as a pressure on water bodies within the EU.

0.3.Legal implementation of related Directives adopted in accordance with Article 16 (EQSs) and 17 (Groundwater) of the WFD

Two closely related Directives have been adopted since 2000, one further specifying the legal requirements in relation to groundwater status (Directive 2006/118/EC, also known as the Groundwater Directive) the second regarding the chemical status of surface waters (Directive 2008/105/EC, also known as the EQSs or Priority Substances Directive).

The Commission has continued with the process of conformity checks for both Directives. On the Groundwater Directive the first steps were taken (requests for clarification sent through investigations); there are two open infringement cases and one pilot on non-conformity.

Both Directives have been amended (Commission Directive 2014/80 amending Annex II of the Groundwater Directive 2006/118 and Directive 2013/39/EU which amends the EQS Directive 2008/105). Therefore, the Commission is in the process of checking the conformity of this amending legislation. There are presently a number of non-communication cases concerning Commission Directive 2014/80.

As implementation of these Directives goes hand in hand with that of the WFD, the variety of tools listed for that Directive is equally applied here. To note, that there are dedicated working groups under the CIS for both Chemicals and Groundwater.

5.Results of the assessment at EU level and recommendations

This chapter includes the results of the assessment of the second RBMPs adopted and reported by Member States.

0.0.Governance

0.0.0.Introduction

The WFD creates a framework for the integrated management of all aspects of water policy. A robust framework and appropriate and effective multi-level governance structures are essential pre-requisites for successful integrated river basin management. Some of the key aspects of water governance in the context of the implementation of the WFD are to ensure an adequate territorial approach, the clear identification of responsibilities, coordination and cooperation across sectors, interests and borders as well as ensuring adequate human and financial resource are allocated.

Transparency on this whole process within a clear governance structure will encourage public participation in both the development and delivery of necessary measures to deliver sustainable water management.

Assessment of implementation and compliance with the WFD requirements in the 2nd cycle

Administrative arrangements – river basin districts

The criteria for successful water governance structures are inter alia clear and effective alignment of objectives and adequate territorial approaches which take the whole catchment as the basis for the integrated water management. The Directive defines the RBD as the main unit for management of river basins, for which competent authorities that apply the rules of the Directive need to be identified. There is a requirement to co-ordinate the actions (nationally and internationally) to achieve the environmental objectives established by the Directive through the planned Programmes of Measures.

The designation of RBDs is thus one of the core aspects of the integrated river basin management approach setting out the geographical extent for the co-ordination of water resources. In most cases, the RBDs have been established respecting the hydrological boundaries of the river basins.

Administrative arrangements – competent authorities

The clear identification of responsibilities and roles of authorities is a pre-requisite for successful water management. The WFD therefore requires the designation of competent authorities for its implementation within each river basin district.

Member States have designated a range of competent authorities for the implementation of the WFD 55 . Figure 1 below provides an overview of the authorities that were identified. About one-fourth of Member States have a single authority responsible for all WFD roles. In some cases, only a single type of authority is responsible, for example the Federal States in Germany, but, for most Member States a range of authorities are responsible for different tasks.

Figure 1    Competent authorities for the development and implementation of the RBMPs

Source: WISE electronic reports 2016

Notes: * Ministry of Environment or Ministry responsible for environmental protection. ** Regions include other sub-national administrative levels (e.g. provinces)

In some Member States, specific RBD Authorities have been established for the purpose of the WFD: Bulgaria and Italy are examples. A few Member States have a national body responsible for water management: in Romania, for example, the National Administration for Romanian Waters is responsible for almost all WFD roles. Other Member States have adapted existing water administrations to ensure better implementation of the WFD.

Environment agencies and other national bodies are competent authorities in about half of the Member States. In some cases, these bodies play a leading role: in Portugal, for example, the Environment Agency holds all the main roles related to RBMP and WFD implementation in the mainland RBDs. In other cases, national bodies have specific roles, as is the case in Poland, where the Chief Inspector of Environmental Protection (head of the national Environmental Inspectorate) has roles for monitoring and assessment of water status, enforcement of regulations and implementation of measures.

Regional authorities play a role in about half of Member States. This category includes the Federal States in Germany and the provinces in the Netherlands. In France, department-level authorities are responsible for two RBDs, Corsica and Mayotte.

In a few Member States, municipalities also play a role: in both Bulgaria and Sweden, for example, these are among the bodies responsible for the implementation of measures.

As noted, the great majority of Member States have more than one competent authority. This division between different authorities necessitates that co-ordination is clear and adequate to ensure integrated water management. The WFD indeed requires coordination: Member States should ensure that all requirements of the Directive are co-ordinated in order to achieve the environmental objectives at the level of the RBD.

Several Member States strengthened coordination in the second cycle. In Germany, for example, LAWA – the Working group on water issues, which brings together the Federal States and the Federal Government, represented by the Ministry of Environment – prepared updated guidance in several areas such as surface water monitoring as well as a catalogue of measures for the WFD, Floods Directive and MSFD. In Italy, there was a stronger coordination among regions within RBDs, supported by national legislation, including further national methodologies to ensure common approaches across the RBDs.

RBMPs – structure (subplans)

RBMPs are the main tool for water management of all water bodies within RBDs. Clear plans are important in order to ensure overview and accountability, including policy integration with relevant areas affecting water resources and water management such as energy production, agriculture, transport and industry.

Most Member States have prepared RBMPs for each RBD within their territory and in some cases there are several river basins in each RBD. The WFD leaves the decision on the use of sub-plans to Member States. Sub-plans may offer Member States the opportunity to provide more details on the issues and actions impacting at different levels within the RBD. In the second cycle, more than one-third of Member States had sub-plans for their RBMPs. Coordination is needed to ensure that the implementation of RBMPs and sub-plans is coherent.

The WFD includes key requirements on how the RBMPs shall be the framework for integrating different policies and sectors. The consideration of all types of significant anthropogenic pressures is at the core of the WFD with one of the main building blocks being 'the review of impacts of human activity on the status of water' (Article 5). All potential policy sectors shall therefore be addressed by the RBMPs, including those not part of traditional water management, for instance the agriculture sector, energy production and the transport sector.

All discharges into surface waters shall be controlled in accordance with the 'combined approach' in the WFD. This reinforces policy integration which goes beyond the implementation of point source control measures such as the IPPC/Industrial Emissions Directive, Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive, or policies related to diffuse pollution like the Nitrates Directive. The combined approach is often necessary in order to reach good status and more stringent measures therefore have to be put in place for sources controlled by those Directives and any other relevant legislation.

The assessment has shown improved co-ordination and policy coherence in Member States due to the implementation of the WFD. Member States can learn from each other’s experience as well as further enhance the inclusion of other sectors in the water management.

Strategic Environmental Assessment

The Directive on Strategic Environmental Assessment 56 integrates environmental considerations into plans and programmes, with the goal of promoting sustainable development. The Directive identifies, among the types of plans and programmes to be assessed, those related to water management (Article 3).

The assessment shows that the great majority of Member States carried out a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) procedure for the RBMPs in all their RBDs. In a few Member States, the SEA screening step did not identify a need for a full update to the SEA carried out in the first cycle.

Public consultation and the active involvement of stakeholders

A key mechanism for sectoral and territorial integration is stakeholder involvement in the development of RBMPs. Member States have to ensure consultation and access to background information used for the development of RBMPs and to encourage active involvement of all interested parties. Drafts of the RBMPs, as well as of other key documents, such as the timetable, work programme and overview of significant water management issues shall be published and made available for public consultation for at least six months.

Providing information on the consultation and provision of documents

RBMPs can communicate to interested parties, including the public, how water management will be carried out. Interested parties shall be provided access to sufficient information to enable them to express their views in a meaningful way. This is not the case if only incomplete drafts of RBMPs are made available or background documents which are a part of the plan are not made available.

The requirement to conduct a consultation on draft RBMPs lasting six months was respected in almost all Member States. Moreover, the Member States have undertaken considerable efforts in consulting stakeholders and the public and they have used a variety of different outreach methods (see

Figure 2 below). On average, Member States used five of the ten information methods listed in the WFD Reporting Guidance. All listed more than one method, and one-fourth of the Member States used either eight or nine methods in at least some of their RBDs.

Figure 2    Methods used by Member States to inform the public and stakeholders of the RBMP consultation

Source: WISE electronic reports 2016

The most common outreach methods were the Internet and direct invitations to stakeholders: both were used in almost all Member States. Some Member States have set up dedicated web portals on water issues that provided information on the consultation: Austria, notablyhas developed three – one to provide technical information for the interested public (WISA), another to provide general information to support public involvement in the WFD (Wasseraktiv), and the third to engage with young people (Generation Blue). Via a LIFE+ project called WATLIFE, Slovakia developed a web site called voda je život (water is life), providing information to the public on water issues. A small group of Member States used social networking among the information methods in at least some of their RBDs.

With regard to the provision of documents, about two-thirds of the Member States made drafts for consultation available for download in all their RBDs (see Figure 3 ). In terms of other methods to provide the draft RBMPs, many Member States made paper copies available in municipal buildings, exhibitions, direct mailing via email and some by post.

Some Member States also provided relevant supporting documents during the consultation. In the Netherlands, for example, related plans (for example at provincial level) were provided as well as fact sheets on the conditions of each water body.

Figure 3    Methods used by Member States to provide draft RBMP documents for consultation

Source: WISE electronic reports 2016

Active involvement of stakeholders

The WFD states that ‘Member States shall encourage the active involvement of all interested parties in the implementation of this Directive’ 57 which goes beyond consultation and implies that stakeholders are invited to contribute actively to the process and thus play a role in advising the competent authorities 58 . Active involvement can be fulfilled in various ways, for example through advisory councils or ad-hoc meetings.

Stakeholder groups were actively involved in the preparation of the RBMPs in all Member States assessed. On average, more than seven types of stakeholder groups listed in the WFD Reporting Guidance were actively involved (including the category of other) in all or some of their RBDs.

Water supply and sanitation, agriculture, local and regional authorities, non-governmental organisations and nature protection groups were actively involved in all or some of the RBDs (see Figure 4 ) in most of the Member States. A few Member States indicated ‘other’ stakeholders, including: universities and research centres; associations of municipalities; landowners and forest owners; health authorities; and small and medium-sized enterprises.

Figure 4    Types of stakeholder groups actively involved the preparation of RBMPs

Source: WISE electronic reports 2016

Concerning the mechanisms for active involvement, the majority of Member States established advisory groups and involved stakeholders in the drafting (see Figure 5     ). Over one-third of Member States identified ‘other’ mechanisms. These include, for example: web-based tools, as well as social media, meetings or conferences and River Basin Committees.

Figure 5    Mechanisms for the active involvement of stakeholders in the preparation of RBMPs

Source: WISE electronic reports 2016

Several Member States strengthened the active involvement of stakeholders for the second cycle of RBMPs, for example by ensuring the participation of stakeholders in advisory groups.

Impact of the consultation

The purpose of stakeholder involvement is to ensure that the best and most cost-effective measures are identified and selected, and that acceptance of the measures are built in to the process. It should therefore be highlighted that in all 25 Member States assessed, the consultation of the draft RBMPs has had an impact on the final RBMPs (see Figure 6     below).

In almost all Member States consultation led to the addition of new information in the RBMPs for all or some of their RBDs and to the adjustment of measures, while changes to the selection of measures were made in the majority of Member States. In a high share of Member States, commitments to further work were made as a result of consultation (which possibly would not be reflected in changes to the second RBMPs), both in terms of action in the next cycle and in terms of further research. Finally, about one-third of Member States made changes to the methodology as a result of consultation and a few made other types of changes, for instance addition of new river water bodies, greater coordination of policies and finance, integration of RBMPs into territorial contracts, and improved linkages with FRMP.

Figure 6    Impacts of the consultation on the final RBMPs

Source: WISE electronic reports 2016

Overall, extensive consultation has been one of the major achievements of the WFD and has in general increased public awareness and provided valuable information for the further process. The Commission has however received information which indicates that some stakeholders still do not have the opportunity to contribute actively to the process and thus play a role in advising the competent authorities in a sufficiently inclusive way.

Integration with the Floods Directive and the MSFD

The framework established by the WFD in order to protect inland surface waters, transitional waters, coastal waters and groundwater contributes inter alia to the protection of territorial and marine waters (WFD Article 1) and Member States shall take the necessary measures including preventing and reducing pollution to the marine environment, in accordance with the MSFD (MSFD). The first step is for Member States to ensure that the necessary actions are taken to coordinate RBMPs with the MSFD objectives. About half of the Member States have started to do so by undertaking joint consultation of the RBMPs with the MSFD in all or some of their RBDs (see Figure 7     ). However, there is still a lack of coordination, especially regarding coordination of the objectives 59 .

Member States shall also take appropriate steps to coordinate actions under the Floods Directive and the WFD, focusing on opportunities for improving efficiency, information exchange and for achieving common synergies and benefits, including coordination of active involvement of interested parties, as appropriate.

The great majority of Member States has carried out a joint consultation of their RBMPs and the FRMPs, and a few Member States have also integrated the two plans into a joint plan.

Figure 7    Integration of the RBMPs with FRMPs and with the MSFD

Source: WISE electronic reports 2016

International coordination and co-operation

One of the main elements introduced by the WFD was the legal requirement for transboundary co-operation. Indeed, 60% of EU territory is covered by international river basins, and all Member States except Cyprus and Malta share international river basins.

A river basin covering the territory of more than one Member State shall in accordance with the WFD be designated as an international river basin district (IRBD), and Member States concerned shall together ensure coordination with a view of producing a single RBMP.

In some international river basins there was extensive co-operation even before the WFD, such as the Rhine where there was important progress on pollution reduction. Most existing international river conventions were amended to fulfil the role of co-ordination of the implementation of the WFD.

International cooperation is taking place in the frame of international agreements, permanent co‐operation bodies and international RBMPs and PoMs. In six international RBDs that cover multiple Member States, all these elements are seen (designated as category 1 cooperation – see chapter 7 on international cooperation for further information). In total, half of the Member States participate in at least one international river basin with category 1 coordination. The Danube iRBD, for example, brings together nine Member States as well as five third countries ( Figure 8 below provides an overview of Member States and international RBDs by level of coordination).

In other international RBDs, cooperation includes international agreements combined with permanent co‐operation mechanisms, though not the preparation of common RBMPs and Programmes of Measures; close to half of the Member States share river basins at this level of coordination (designated as category 2). An example are the RBDs shared between Portugal and Spain, where cooperation takes place under the Albufeira Agreement, which created a conference of the Parties and a commission, under which a series of working groups are organised.

A few Member States have international agreements on water management without permanent co-operation mechanisms (category 3). In some of these cases, co-operation has been quite active: for example Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have exchanged information on monitoring and on measures (moreover, after the preparation of their national RBMPs, Estonia and Latvia produced international “roof reports” summarising common challenges and actions in a shared RBD).

Figure 8    Member State participation in international RBDs, by level of coordination

Source: WISE electronic reports 2016

Note: Some Member States participate in several iRBDs at different levels of coordination. The figure only shows data for the Member States assessed.

Overall, international cooperation has significantly improved with the introduction of the WFD, and the co-ordination between Member States has continued to improve in the second RBMPs. There is still a need though for further strengthening international cooperation both within the EU and with neighbouring countries. Strengthening can for example be done through increased active exchange, coordination of monitoring, harmonisation of river basin specific pollutants and coordination on all aspects of WFD implementation for RBDs in general – especially within category 3 and 4 cooperation (more information provided in chapter 7).

Main changes in implementation and compliance since 1st cycle

This assessment has in general shown progress in the Member States’ implementation of the governance requirements of the WFD since the first RBMPs. The assessment though carried out has focused on a few key reported indicators and the approach is not directly comparable to the assessment of the first RBMPs.

The assessment has shown improved co-ordination and policy coherence within many Member States due to the implementation of the WFD, as seen in the example of Italy, where coordination within RBDs was strengthened.

The assessment has also shown that most Member States undertook a range of actions to engage the public and stakeholders in the consultation process, in many cases going further than in the first cycle. In the second cycle, the most common methods reported were Internet and direct contacts with stakeholders, while a few Member States used web sites and social media to reach the public. In almost all Member States, a broad range of stakeholder groups were actively involved, in particular non-governmental organisation/nature protection groups, agriculture and local and regional authorities, followed by industry and water supply and sanitation. The consultation process has had an impact on water management in all Member States, for example via the addition of new information in the RBMPs and the selection of measures.

The implementation of the WFD has strengthened cooperation among Member States and with third countries on water management in shared river basins, and this process continued in the second cycle. Examples include strengthened coordination between Bulgaria and Greece and also among Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

0.0.1.Conclusions 

In many Member States, several authorities are responsible for implementing different aspects of the WFD. This underlines the importance of coordination between government bodies and across administrative levels. Member States are becoming more aware of the necessity of clarity regarding both cooperation and responsibilities; while many have made progress, there is a need to enhance coordination in order to reach the objectives of the Directive.

Member States have undertaken considerable efforts in consulting stakeholders and the public and have used a variety of different outreach methods. Moreover, Member States used a range of mechanisms for the active involvement of stakeholders in the development of the RBMPs: in the great majority, advisory groups were established

The extensive consultation undertaken has been one of the major achievements of the WFD and has in general increased public awareness and provided valuable information for the further process. In all 25 Member States assessed, consultation on the draft RBMPs had an impact, such as the addition of new information and the adjustment of measures.

International cooperation has significantly improved with the introduction of the WFD, and co-ordination between Member States has continued to strengthen in the second cycle of RBMP. Specific recommendations for international cooperation under the WFD are provided in chapter 7.

Although the assessments conducted on the first and second RBMPs are not directly comparable due to different approaches used for the assessment, the general conclusion is that the patterns of governance appear to be largely similar with adjustments in responsible authorities, enhanced involvement from stakeholders, improved transparency, improved coordination and improved international coordination.

0.0.2.Recommendations

·Member States should continue to focus on improving stakeholder involvement in order to provide them with the opportunity to contribute actively to the process.

·Clarity regarding responsibilities between government bodies and across administrative levels as well as enhanced coordination should be ensured in order to reach the objectives of the WFD.

·Institutional arrangements for international cooperation should be further strengthened regarding relevant aspects of the WFD in the iRBDs, in particular in those iRBDs where international coordination bodies are not in place.

·International cooperation should be further strengthened in iRBDs shared with countries which are not members of the EU, including candidate and potential candidate countries [in support of the alignment to the EU environmental requirements in their process to join the EU].

[more specific recommendations for international cooperation under the WFD are provided in chapter 7].

0.1.Characterisation of the River Basin District

0.1.1.Introduction

Article 5 of the WFD requires Member States to undertake an analysis of the characteristics of each RBD or portion of an international RBD falling within their territory. The first characterisation of suface water and groundwater bodies was reported in March 2005. This included a general description of the characteristics of their RBDs (Annex VII, A.1). Under Article 5(2) the characterisation is required to be reviewed, and updated if necessary by 2013 and every 6 years after that. Therefore meaning the characterisation should have been reviewed by each Member State between the first and the second RBMPs.

Characterisation should identify all relevant categories and types of water bodies within the RBD. For surface waters, specific typologies and reference conditions have to be established. This step is an essential foundation for a robust classification systems and ecological status assessment.

Characterisation also involves correctly identifying water bodies at risk of failing objectives. The results of the risk assessment inform the monitoring of water bodies and the subsequent classification of status. These water bodies are then the subsequent focus for implementation of necessary measures for the achievement of objectives. It is crucial that risk assessment methodologies are fit for purpose, as objectives may be missed or measures not correctly targeted.

For operational purposes, the WFD defines a water body as a ‘discrete and significant’ element of water, which is the scale at which status is assessed. The size thresholds given in Annex II for System A typology (catchments larger than 10 km2 and lakes larger than 50 Ha) have been used as a possibility for differentiating water bodies. However this approach should not exclude smaller water bodies from the protection of the Directive. Member States have flexibility to decide not to designate very small water bodies and can aggregate these small water bodies into groups or include them as part of a larger contiguous water body of the same surface water category and of the same type. The optimum size of a water body is the size that allows the objectivies of the Directive to be most efficiently achieved.

Assessment of implementation and compliance with WFD requirements in second RBMPs

Delineation of surface water bodies

The following table presents an overview of the water categories available in each Member State. Throughout the EU, more than 111 000 surface water bodies have been defined in the second RBMPs (compared to around 127 000 in the first RBMPs and 70 000 reported for the initial characterisation completed in 2004). Approximately 80% are rivers, 16% lakes, and the remaining 4% coastal and transitional waters which is similar to results from the first RBMPs. The average size of water bodies in Member States is variable with average river water body lengths varying from 2.4 km in Denmark to close to the EU average (13 km) in Portugal, Croatia, and the UK, and up to an average of 54 km in Bulgaria. Sweden and Finland have the highest number of lake water bodies, 7 422 and 4 617, respectively. The EU average area of water bodies increases (as might be expected) from 4.5 km2 for lakes, to 19 km2 for transitional waters and to 102 km2 for coastal waters. This is similar to the first RBMPs with the exception of coastal waters for which the previous EU average area was 644 km2. The largest average coastal water body size in the second RBMPs was reported by Estonia equal to 907 km2 (in the first RBMPs, the largest average coastal water body size was reported by Spain with 8 700 km2).

Table 1: Number of water bodies under each water category in the Member States

Source: WISE reporting 2016. Values in brackets were subsequently provided by Member States and differ from those reported in WISE.

There are five landlocked Member States (Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Luxembourg and Slovakia) for which transitional and coastal waters are not relevant. Six other Member States (Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Sweden and Slovenia) with a coastline have not designated any transitional waters though coastal water bodies have been identified. Some justifications for this were provided in the RBMPs. Sweden had defined transitional water bodies in the first RBMPs, but these were redefined as coastal water bodies because it was not possible to distinguish them from the nearby coastal waters. Malta had not included any rivers, lakes or transitional water bodies in its first RBMP but has done so for the second RBMP.

Some Member States have re-delineated surface water bodies for the second RBMPs. Overall, about 90% of surface water bodies are unchanged from the first to the second RBMPs. About 10% were reported to be deleted, markedly modified (split or aggregated) or newly created 60 . At a Member State level, the vast majority of surface water bodies in Denmark and Croatia were deleted and created from the first to the second RBMPs. There was also a significant amount of splitting of surface water bodies in Bulgaria, Cyprus and Luxemburg. Very little explanation of the consequences of these changes for the comparability of status between cycles was found in the RBMPs. Poland was the only Member State to report no changes to surface water bodies. 61  

Generally Member States have included information on size thresholds that they have used to delineate river and lake water bodies. The following table presents the minimum size criteria used by Member States to delineate river and lake water bodies. A large majority have used the size thresholds in typology System A of WFD Annex II (catchments larger than 10 km2 and lakes larger than 50 Ha). Some Member States have explicitly included smaller water bodies if they are protected under other legislation or if they are ecologically important in the basin. In Finland and Latvia, the minimum catchment size for rivers was 100km2 which was significantly higher than the other Member States. However, both countries reported that smaller rivers have also been considered if they were particularly relevant for water management or if delineation was needed to achieve specific environmental quality objectives in protected areas.

Table 2: Minimum size criteria used by Member States to delineate river and lake water bodies

Source: WISE reporting 2016; Note: The reported minimum size criteria were reported at the RBD level and have been summarised at Member State level in this table.

Typology for surface water bodies

As part of the characterisation, Member States have defined surface water body types (typology) for each surface water category (i.e. rivers, lakes, transitional waters or coastal waters) in each RBD, and have delineated surface and groundwater bodies in accordance with the methodology specified in Annex II of the WFD. This also includes the identification of HMWBs and AWBs, which is addressed in chapter 6.7. For each surface water body type, type-specific reference conditions should have been established representing the values for that surface water body type at high ecological status.

The division of a surface water category into types is based on abiotic descriptors such as altitude, geology, size, etc. using System A or B (Annex II of WFD). The ecological relevance of the different theoretical types has to be demonstrated by cross-checking against biological data such as benthic invertebrates groups and/or species composition. Not all water categories occur in every RBD. Many Member States have still not validated their water body typology against biological data, or it is unclear if biological validation has taken place based on the information in the RBMPs.

The following table presents an overview of the number of types reported per water category and Member State. All water categories have types that have been developed in each Member State. The typologies between the first and the second RBMPs remained largely the same, however some individual Member States did have significant changes and these can be examined in the respective Member State reports.

Table 3: Overview of the number of types reported per water category and Member State

Source: WISE reporting 2016. Note: Not relevant means there are no water bodies in this category. Values in brackets were subsequently provided by Member States and differ from those reported in WISE.

Member States were asked to report if there is no corresponding EU intercalibration common type for their national types. At EU level, the majority of national types for natural surface water bodies have been intercalibrated.. However, there were often several national types that had not been intercalibrated.

Reference conditions

Member States are required to identify the ecological status of water bodies by comparing current status with near natural or reference conditions. The establishment of reference conditions is a basic pre-requisite so as to allow a relative comparison of the ecological status at one certain moment. Reference conditions have to be established for each of the surface water types. They represent the values for that surface water body type at high ecological status. According to WFD Annex II reference conditions can be established using different methods (without specific ranking):

·Spatially based reference conditions using data from monitoring sites if sufficiently undisturbed or minimally disturbed sites are available.

·When adequate numbers of representative reference sites are not available in a region/type, predictive modelling, using the data available within a region/type or borrowing data from other similar regions/types, can be used in model construction and calibration.

·A combination of the above approaches.

·Where it is not possible to use these methods, reference conditions can be established using expert judgement.

Establishing reference conditions for many quality elements may involve using more than one of the methods described.

The establishment of reference conditions and the establishment of ecological class boundaries (i.e. boundary between high and good) are closely interconnected. Considerations assumed and methodologies for the establishment of reference conditions are crucial for the judgement of the risk that individual water bodies will fail to reach the overall objective of good water status.

The figure below shows by water category for all Member states whether type-specific reference conditions have been developed for all, some and none of the biological, physicochemical and hydro-morphological quality elements for all surface water body type. The proportion of Member States who established reference conditions for all types and for all quality elements (i.e. biological, hydro-morphological or physicochemical) is, for the different water categories, 16% for rivers and lakes, 4% for transitional water bodies and 8% for coastal water bodies. A few Member States have established all reference conditions for all water categories, including Austria, Hungary and Poland. Only a small proportion of Member States have no type specific reference conditions at all for rivers (8%) and for transitional waters (4%), and 16% of Member States have no reference conditions for lakes. A large proportion of Member states have partly established reference conditions, which means they established them for all types of a water category but not for each quality element (partly - all types), or only for some types (partly - some types). It is the case for 76% of rivers, 64% of lakes, 48% of transitional waters and 72% of coastal water bodies.

Table 4 shows the percentage of surface water body types in the EU with reference conditions established for all, some and none of the biological, hydro-morphological and physicochemical quality elements. It clearly highlights that the quality elements with the least type specific reference conditions established are hydro-morphological quality elements, with 68% of types having none established. In most of the cases, Member States established reference conditions for some water types, but 8 Member States didn’t establish reference conditions for hydro-morphological quality elements for any type (including Denmark, Finland, France, Croatia, Italy, Latvia, Malta and Slovakia). Regarding the other quality elements, 77% and 76% of biological quality elements and physicochemical quality elements (respectively) have type-specific reference conditions established for all or some types.

Overall the situation is similar to the first RBMPs with little improvement shown at the EU level. Some Member States have shown improvements and this information can be obtained in the individual Member State reports.

Figure 2 Type-specific reference conditions for each surface water type by water category

Source: WISE reporting 2016;

The situation may be different between RBDs but the data is summarised at a national level.

Table 4: Percentage of surface water body types in the EU with reference conditions established for all, some and none of the biological, hydro-morphological and physicochemical quality elements.

Source: WISE reporting 2016.

Delineation and further characterisation of groundwater bodies

Approximately 13 380 groundwater bodies have been delineated in the EU with the highest number being reported by Finland (3 773) and the lowest by Luxembourg (6). The average size of groundwater bodies in the EU is around 320 km2 with the smallest by far on average being in Finland (2.6 km2), and the largest in Latvia (3 460 km2). Around 70% of the groundwater bodies (by area) have not changed from the first to the second RBMPs, while 29% of those from the first RBMPs have been deleted and replaced by new ones 62 .

In the assessment of the first RBMPs, it was recommended that the delineation of groundwater bodies should be better harmonised and that related guidance documents should be improved. The CIS Guidance Document no. 26 on the “Risk Assessment and the Use of Conceptual Models for Groundwater” provided more guidance on the refinement of water body delineation. Since the first RBMPs, most Member States have further characterised their groundwater bodies by providing information on their geological formation and whether they are layered or not. In addition, the majority of Member States have provided an inventory of associated surface systems, including terrestrial ecosystems and bodies of surface water with which the groundwater body is dynamically linked.

Pressures and impacts on surface and groundwater bodies

The WFD requires identification of significant pressures from point sources of pollution, diffuse sources of pollution, modifications of flow regimes through abstractions or regulation and morphological alterations, as well as any other pressures. ‘Significant’ is interpreted as meaning that the pressure contributes to an impact that may result in the failing of environmental objectives.

For the second RBMPs, Member States have reported on significance of pressures at a disaggregated level, i.e. for different types of pressure-driver combinations, which helped to better identify the link between pressures, sectoral drivers and measures. The identification of significant pressures can involve different approaches: numerical tools (e.g. modelling); expert judgement or a combination of both tools. The magnitude of the pressure is compared with thresholds or criteria, relevant to the water body type to assess its significance. Figure 3 shows the types of tools reported to be used to assess the significance of the main types of pressures. For most pressure types, most Member States use a combination of numerical tools and expert judgement (see Figure 3).

In addition, the criteria used to define significance of pressures have been further developed by some Member States. The significance of pressures has been defined using thresholds for 61% of surface water bodies and 68% of groundwater bodies. The significance of pressures has also been linked to the failure of environmental objectives for 82% of surface water bodies and 80% of groundwater bodies. Whilst there have been advancements since the first RBMPs, there is room for improvement and the criteria could be made more explicit in the RBMPs and supporting documents.

Member States also reported which significant pressures were not assessed, however it was often unclear from the RBMPs and supporting documents what the rationale for excluding these pressures were. Moreover, no justification has been provided to discard certain pressures that had been reported in the first RBMPs.

The EEA State of Water Report 2018 provides a wide overview of the identification of significant pressures and impacts at EU level. As shown in Figure 4, the main significant pressures affecting surface water bodies are hydro-morphological pressures (40% of surface water bodies affected), diffuse source pollution (38%) and point source pollution (18%) 63 . Most countries report diffuse sources of pollution as being a pressure for groundwater (24 out of 25 Member States), while 20 Member states report point sources as a pressure. The main pressures affecting groundwater bodies are : diffuse pollution from agriculture which is identified as the major pressure causing failure of good chemical status affecting 20% of groundwater bodies (by area), and water abstraction and change in groundwater level with over-abstraction affecting 16% of the total groundwater area. In particular, water abstraction for public water supply, agriculture and industry is the main significant pressures causing failure of good quantitative status.

Pressures and impacts should be apportioned to the responsible drivers, sectors and activities to give a clear picture of the most important sources for a given impact so that specific measures can be set within their POMs to address particular pressures. The main drivers for point source pollution pressures were urban wastewater, followed by industrial plants and storm overflows. For diffuse source pollution, the main driver was agriculture, followed by atmospheric deposition and discharges not connected to sewerage plants 64 .

Figure 3 The types of tools reported to be used to assess the significance of the main types of pressures in surface water and groundwater

Source: WISE reporting 2016

The main impacts on surface water bodies are nutrient enrichment, chemical pollution and altered habitats due to morphological changes, reflecting the key pressures 65 . It is highlighted that a higher proportion of transitional and coastal water bodies are affected by pollution pressures compared with rivers and lakes.

Unknown impacts of anthropogenic origin were also reported for a large proportion of water bodies in several Member States, which would indicate that the pressures and impacts have not been fully apportioned to activities or sectors. Also in the case of hydro-morphological pressures, many Member States have not clearly apportioned these to specific sectors, according to the WISE reporting (see further information in chapter 6.13).

Figure 4 Proportion of surface water bodies affected by main pressures and sources of pressures

Notes: Proportion of water bodies with specific pressures; for example, point sources affect 18 % of water bodies, and the main point source pressure is discharges from urban waste water treatment plants, which affect 12 % of all surface water bodies. A water body may be affected by more than one pressure; therefore, the sum of percentages is greater than 100 %. IED plants are industrial emissions covered by the Industrial Emissions Directive (EC, 2018e).

Source: EEA (2018). European Waters – Assessment of status and pressures 2018, EEA Report No 7/2018, ISSN 1977-8449.

Establishment and use of inventories of discharges, emissions and losses of chemical substances

Article 5 of the EQSD (2008/105/EC) requires Member States to establish, on the basis of the information collected in accordance with Articles 5 and 8 of the WFD and other available data such as that collected under Regulation (EC) No 166/2006, an inventory of emissions, discharges and losses of all Priority Substances and the 8 other pollutants listed in Part A of Annex I EQSD for each RBD, or part thereof, lying within their territory. These inventories should allow Member States to further target measures to tackle pollution from priority substances. It should also inform the review of the monitoring networks, and allow the assessment of progress made in reducing (resp. suppressing) emissions, discharges and losses for priority substances (resp. priority hazardous substances).

The transposition deadline for the EQSD was July 2010, after the adoption of the first RBMPs. This meant an inventory precisely according to Article 5 of the EQSD did not have to be established by the time of submission of the first RBMPs. However, the obligations for gathering data under Articles 5 and 8 of the WFD were effectively in place by the end of 2006, as the list of substances was already known and emissions data on some substances have been gathered. In 35% of the RBMPs assessed for the first cycle, no clear information was found relating to inventories.

The CIS Guidance Document No. 28 “Technical Guidance on the Preparation of an Inventory of Emissions, Discharges and Losses of Priority and Priority Hazardous Substances” 66 published in 2012 addresses the preparation of the inventories at national RBD scale.

For the second RBMPs, each Member State reported for the first time which Priority Substances had been included in an inventory of discharges, emissions and losses and all RBDs reported an inventory for at least some Priority Substances. Only a few countries have complete inventories, including Austria, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Latvia and Slovenia. For the remaining Member States, the inventories are not complete. In some cases, justification for not including the missing Substances in the inventory was provided but not always. Some Member States included less than 10 substances in their inventories, it is particularly the case for Bulgaria, Croatia, Malta, Sweden and Slovakia.

The CIS Guidance Document no. 28 recommends a two-step approach for compiling inventories. In the first step, substances considered to be less important are subject to only a basic estimation of significant inputs, whereas for the remaining substances, a more in-depth analysis should be performed. Two-thirds of the Member States reported that the two-step approach was applied, very few reported that it was not used and the remaining Member States used this approach for some, but not all Priority Substances. Analysis of inputs of Priority Substances was almost entirely based on assessment of point sources with diffuse source inputs not being given due consideration.

As required by Article 5 of the EQS Directive, the Commission will assess progress in reducing (respectively suppressing) emissions, discharges and losses of priority substances (respectively priority hazardous substances). This will be done after Member States have reported their second inventories as part of their third RBMPs.

Main changes in implementation and compliance since first RBMPs

Overall at an EU level about 90% of surface water bodies remained unchanged in terms of delineation since the first RBMPs. However, in certain Member States, it can be seen that a large proportion of surface water bodies did change (splitting, creation and deletion) since the first RBMPs. Around 70% of the groundwater bodies (by area) had not changed. Since the first RBMPs most Member States have further characterised their groundwater bodies by providing information on their geological formation and whether they are layered or not. In addition, the majority of Member States have provided an inventory of associated surface systems, including terrestrial ecosystems and bodies of surface water with which the groundwater body is dynamically linked.

Overall since the first RBMPs there have been no significant improvements in the development of typologies and reference conditions for surface waters. In particular many gaps in terms of type-specific reference conditions still remain.

For most pressure types, most Member States use a combination of numerical tools and expert judgement to identify significant pressures. This is similar to the first RBMPs, although many Member States have shown improvements in the methodologies for individual pressure types. In addition, the criteria used to define significance of pressures have been further developed by some Member States. The significance of pressures has been defined using thresholds for 61% of surface waters and 68% of groundwaters. The significance of pressures has also been linked to the failure of environmental objectives for 82% of surface water bodies and 80% of groundwater bodies.

As to changes in reporting of inventories, the transposition deadline was July 2010, meaning an inventory precisely according to Article 5 of the EQSD did not have to be established by the time of submission of the first RBMPs. Therefore, 35% of the first RBMPs assessed had no clear information relating to inventories. For the second RBMPs, each Member State reported which Priority Substances had been included in an inventory of discharges, emissions and losses for each RBD, however only a few countries have complete inventories.

0.1.2.Conclusions

Overall at an EU level about 90% of surface water bodies have remained unchanged in terms of delineation since the first RBMPs although in certain Member States, a large proportion of surface water bodies did change since the first RBMPs. Around 70% of the groundwater bodies (by area) have not changed. Nevertheless, little explanation of the consequences of these changes for the comparability of status between cycles was found in the RBMPs.

Reference conditions have not been established for all water body types in a number of Member States for all water categories. The situation is similar to the first RBMPs with little improvement shown at the EU level. Hydro-morphological quality elements were found to be the quality elements whose type-specific reference conditions show the most significant gaps for surface water body types.

The identification of significant pressures by Member States involves different approaches such as numerical tools (e.g. modelling), expert judgment or a combination of both. For most pressure types, most Member States use a combination of numerical tools and expert judgement. The criteria used to define significance of pressures have been further developed by some Member States since the first RBMPs. However, there remain significant gaps that will need to be addressed in the current cycle, particularly in defining thresholds; in addition, the criteria used could be made more explicit in the RBMPs or in supportive documents. Member States reported which significant pressures were not assessed, however it was often unclear from the RBMPs and supporting documents what the rationale for excluding these pressures were. Further work is required by Member States on the apportionment of pressures to sectors and activites to better inform the targeting of measures. For the second RBMPs, Member States have reported on significance of pressures at a disaggregated level, i.e. for different types of pressure-driver combinations, which helped to better identify the link between pressures, sectoral drivers and measures. However, unknown impacts of anthropogenic origin and pressures of unknown drivers (especially hydro-morphological pressures) were reported for a large proportion of water bodies in some Member States, which would indicate that the pressures and impacts have not been fully apportioned to activities or sectors.

For the second RBMPs, each Member State reported which Priority Substances had been included in an inventory of discharges, emissions and losses, however only a few countries have complete inventories, with the reasons for incomplete inventories generally not being reported. Two-thirds of the Member States reported that the two-step approach for compiling inventories, as recommended in the CIS Guidance Document no. 28, was applied although analysis of inputs of Priority Substances. However, it was almost entirely based on assessment of point sources with diffuse source inputs not being given due consideration.

0.1.3.Recommendations

·Member States should address the existing gaps in the definition of reference conditions for surface waters. Reference conditions should be established for all water body types and for all relevant quality elements, in order to improve the reliability of status assessment. A particular effort has to be done for hydro-morphological quality elements.

·Improvements are further needed in the evaluation of significance of pressures and in the apportionment of those pressures to sectors and activities, in order to better inform the targeting of measures. In particular, all pressures should be assessed with methodologies that enable a reliable quantitative assessment.

·Member States should complete their inventories of discharges, emissions and losses of Priority Substances from point and diffuse sources, in order to cover all Priority Substances, and provide clear information on the reasons for not including certain substances when that is the case.

0.2.Monitoring, assessment and classification of ecological status in surface waters

0.2.0.Introduction

The main objectives of the WFD include the achievement of GES/potential by 2015. Member States had to establish surface water monitoring networks to provide a coherent and comprehensive overview of ecological (and chemical) status within each river basin that allows for the classification of water bodies into five classes consistent with the normative definitions given in Annex V of the WFD. The quality elements used for the classification of ecological status comprise biological elements, hydro-morphological elements supporting the biological elements; general physicochemical elements and RBSPs supporting the biological elements.

The WFD specifies the types and objectives of monitoring to be undertaken, including surveillance monitoring which should be carried out in sufficient surface water bodies to provide an assessment of the overall ecological status/potential within each catchment or subcatchments within the river basin district. Surveillance monitoring should be able to detect the impact of all potential anthropogenic pressures and natural long-term changes. This requires a range of different quality elements to be monitored. Operational monitoring should. establish the status of those bodies identified as being at risk of failing to meet their environmental objectives, and. assess any changes in the status of such bodies resulting from the programmes of measures. Operational monitoring generally focuses on the quality elements most sensitive to the specific pressures and impacts on water bodies.

Annex V of the WFD provides guideline monitoring frequencies for the different quality elements. In any case, frequencies should be chosen so as to achieve an acceptable level of confidence and precision in the results of monitoring, and in the subsequent assessment and classification of ecological status/potential of water bodies. Estimates of the confidence and precision attained by the monitoring system used should be stated in the RBMPs. The level of confidence and precision achieved in the classification of water bodies should enable the measures needed to achieve WFD objectives to be effectively targeted.

Before the implementation of the WFD many Member States had developed their own systems for monitoring and assessing the quality of water bodies. However, these were generally developed for specific stressors or types of impact, such as organic pollution and acidification. Considerable efforts have subsequently been made by Member States to develop assessment methods for the biological quality elements, and the supporting hydro-morphological and physicochemical quality elements that meet the requirements of the WFD. This includes the establishment of type‐specific reference conditions for all water body types for all relevant quality elements: this aspect has been assessed in this document in the chapter on characterisation.

The WFD provides for a process to ensure the comparability between the biological monitoring results of Member States and their monitoring system classifications. These are compared through an intercalibration network comprised of monitoring sites in each Member State and in each ecoregion of the Union. Member States should apply the results of the intercalibration exercise to their national classification systems, in order to set the boundaries between high and good status and between good and moderate status for all their national types. There have been three phases of the intercalibration exercise, each resulting in a Commission Decision. It is expected that the results of the first two exercises would have been used in the development of the second RBMPs, while the results of the third exercise should be used in the next river basin planning cycle.

According to the one-out-all-out principle, that the status of a water body should be classified according to the biological quality element with the lowest status class and the status class should be downgraded to moderate if the worst biological quality element is good and one or more of the supporting quality elements are less than good. When combining with the supporting quality elements, an aggregated level can be used for the supporting quality elements belonging to the same impact (e.g. phosphorus, nitrogen, Secchi depth), based on averaging the class for single quality elements within each impact category, before applying the one-out-all-out principle.

Monitoring of ecological status/potential in surface waters

Monitoring programmes

Table 3.1 gives the number of monitoring programmes reported by Member States for each of their relevant water categories. Monitoring programmes may include more than one water category and hence the numbers in the surface water column are not necessarily the sum of the programmes for each water category. Territorial waters are not a water body category under the WFD. However, it should be noted that under Article 2(1) of the WFD, territorial waters are included for the assessment and reporting of chemical status.

Table 3.1: Number of surface water monitoring programmes reported by Member States. Note: NR = water category not relevant to land-locked Member State.

Source: WISE electronic reports.

In total 551 monitoring programmes were reported by EU Member States including 12 for territorial waters reported by 5 Member States. There are many differences in how Member States have designed and reported their monitoring programmes. There are examples where there are separate programmes for surveillance and operational purposes and/or separate programmes for each relevant water category. Several Member State-specific gaps have been identified in the reported programmes, especially the lack of operational or surveillance monitoring programmes for lakes, transitional or coastal waters in some Member States.

Some Member States also reported monitoring programmes that are not explicitly related to the WFD (e.g. Bathing Water Directive and Nitrates Directive programmes for surface waters). Some programmes were also time limited and in one Member State it appears that no monitoring programmes are planned for the duration of the second cycle.

Monitoring sites

a)Second RBMPs

Tables 3.2 and 3.3 present the number of surveillance and operational monitoring sites reported by Member States in the second RBMPs. It is apparent that Member States have interpreted differently what is meant in the reporting guidance by ecological monitoring and chemical monitoring: i.e. are river basin specific pollutants included in chemical monitoring and/or in ecological monitoring. Also no explicit differentiation had been made between chemical and ecological monitoring in the data reported for the first RBMPs. For these reasons the data in the tables below make no allowance for whether sites are used for chemical or ecological monitoring.

Table 3.2: Number of sites used for surveillance monitoring for the second RBMPs.

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Notes for table: CW: coastal waters; LW: lakes; RW: rivers; TeW: territorial waters; TW: transitional waters. NR = water category not relevant to land-locked Member States. No allowance has been made as to whether the sites are for ecological or chemical monitoring. This is because this makes the data more comparable with the data from the first RBMPs.

Table 3.3    Table: Number of sites used for operational monitoring for the second RBMPs.

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Note for table: CW: coastal waters; LW: lakes; RW: rivers; TeW: territorial waters; TW: transitional waters. NR = water category not relevant to land-locked Member States. No allowance has been made as to whether the sites are for ecological or chemical monitoring. This is because this makes the data more comparable with the data from the first RBMPs.

At the EU level (25 Member States assessed for this report), more sites were used for the monitoring of rivers than for the other water categories with more being used for operational purposes (67 691) than for surveillance (19 637). The reverse was the case for lakes (7 485 for surveillance monitoring and 5 502 for operational), while similar numbers were used for both purposes in transitional and coastal waters.

b)Changes since the first RBMPs

Table 3.4 summarises the changes in the numbers of surveillance and operational monitoring sites between the first and second RBMPs. The assessment is made at the Member State level and summarises the changes in terms of small, medium and large differences in numbers.

Table 3.4    Number of Member States with changes in the numbers of surveillance and operational monitoring sites between the first and second RBMPs.

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Note to Table: CW: coastal waters; LW: lakes; RW: rivers; TW: transitional waters. No allowance has been made as to whether the sites are for ecological or chemical monitoring. The cells show the number of Member States where there have been increases, decreases or no changes between the first and second RBMPs. Only the RBDs with reported information for both cycles were used in the analysis.

Only for one Member State was there no change between the first and second RBMPs, in the case of surveillance monitoring of lakes. In many Member States there were large increases or decreases in the numbers of sites used for either purpose in all water categories. For example, for six Member States there was at least a 50 % increase in lake surveillance sites and in five others at least a 50 % decrease.

Member State’s RBMPs were examined to look for the reasons behind these changes. For instance, in one Member State, the reasons for the changes included the abolishment of a number of measuring stations that were deemed to be not necessary (e.g. stations used to determine reference conditions), some stations have been changed for reasons of safety (safe access) or for a more rational planning of the network. In general, it would have been expected there would be changes because of filling of methodological and monitoring gaps identified in the first RBMPs. For example, some Member States have adopted a series of national methodological and guidance documents on different topics of water management since the first RBMPs, to ensure a common approach across the RBDs. In other Member States, changes to the monitoring programme were due to the experience gained during the first planning cycle and also reflect the Commission’s recommendations on the first RBMPs. For instance, in one Member State, the river network was expanded to cover rivers with non-permanent flow and to ensure the monitoring in water bodies that were identified as not being in good status in the first RBMP.

The number of monitoring sites may also have changed because of the new delineation of water bodies (e.g. by merging old water bodies or creating new water bodies). In some cases, there was an extension of the monitoring network in order to increase representativeness or a reduction of the network due to a risk-based approach determining the extent of the monitoring.

Further details on changes to the monitoring programmes are given in the Member State-specific reports. Monitoring of quality elements excluding RBSPs

The WFD requires that parameters indicative of all biological quality elements, all hydro-morphological quality elements, all general physicochemical quality elements, those priority list pollutants (described in Chapter 6.4) which are discharged into the river basin or sub-basin and those other pollutants discharged in significant quantities in the river basin or sub-basin (described here as river basin specific pollutants) are monitored in water bodies included in surveillance monitoring.

For operational monitoring, Member States are required to monitor for those biological and hydro-morphological quality elements which are most sensitive to the pressures to which the water bodies are subjected (Annex V, 1.3.2 Selection of quality elements).

Annex V of the WFD provides guidance on the frequency of monitoring of the different quality elements. Surveillance monitoring should be carried out for each monitoring site for a period of one year during the six-year period covered by a RBMP. For phytoplankton this should be done twice during the monitoring year and for the other biological quality elements once during the year. As a guideline, operational monitoring should take place at intervals not exceeding once every six months for phytoplankton and once every three years during the six-year cycle for the other biological quality elements. Greater intervals may be used if they are justified on the basis of technical knowledge and expert judgement.

Figure 3.1 shows, at the EU level, the average proportion of sites used for the operational and surveillance monitoring of biological quality elements in each water category where at least the minimum recommended frequency is applied. There are only two cases where biological quality elements are monitored at least at the minimum recommended frequency at all monitoring sites at which they are monitored: these are for macroalgae and angiosperms in transitional waters for surveillance purposes. The monitoring of fish in rivers and lakes for operational purposes had the smallest proportion on sites that were sampled with at least the minimum recommended frequency: 38 % and 41 % of sites, respectively.

Figure 3.1    Average proportions of sites meeting the minimum recommended frequency for the monitoring of biological quality elements in different water categories.

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Note: Average calculated from the proportion of sites meeting the recommended frequencies in each Member State that reported the element. The numbers in parenthesis are the number of Member States reporting the quality element to be monitored for surveillance and operational purposes, respectively.

Annex V of the WFD indicates which quality elements are expected to be monitored in each water category: a full range of quality elements is required so that the effects of all pressures and impacts can be detected.

There are still significant gaps in the quality elements monitored in each water category. This is particularly so for the hydro-morphological quality elements but there are still significant gaps also in the monitoring of biological quality elements. For example, more than half of the Member States with coastal waters that have reported do not monitor morphological conditions, and half of the Member States with coastal waters do not monitor tidal regime. In terms of biological quality elements, approximately a quarter of the the Member States with coastal waters do not monitor angiosperms and macroalgae in coastal waters.

Table 3.5 summarises at the aggregated level the percentage of water bodies included in surveillance monitoring where all required quality elements are monitored.

Table 3.5: Number of water bodies included in surveillance monitoring and percentages where all required quality elements are monitored.

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Note: The number in brackets next to EU is the number of Member States with reported information. The analysis includes water bodies where ecological monitoring is reported to be undertaken for surveillance purposes.

It is clear from Table 3.5 that nowhere near all water bodies included in surveillance monitoring are monitored for all required quality elements. The hydro-morphological quality elements have the lowest proportion (2 % to 11 %) of water bodies where all required elements are included, followed by the biological quality elements (7 % to 33 %) and general physicochemical quality elements (33 % to 53 %).

Table 3.6 further summarises this issue by presenting the number of Member States where all and none of the required biological, hydro-morphological and physiochemical quality elements are monitored in water bodies included in surveillance monitoring. Very few Member States monitor all required hydro-morphological quality elements in all water bodies, and a significant number monitor none.

Table 3.6:    Number of Member States where all or no water bodies included in surveillance monitoring are monitored for all required biological, hydro-morphological and general physicochemical quality elements.

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Note: The analysis includes water bodies where ecological monitoring is reported to be undertaken for surveillance purposes.

Monitoring of RBSPs

Member States were asked to report the chemical substances monitored at each site. The reporting did not explicitly differentiate between Priority Substances, RBSPs and “other” substances. According to the reporting guidance, chemical substances monitored in surface water that were not Priority Substances should be RBSPs. It is clear that some Member States may have misreported which chemical substances should be considered as RBSPs. Substances reported as “other chemical substances” were not included in this analysis because their inclusion would make the assessment unreliable for some Member States as many “other chemical substances” are, on close examination, the same substance with slightly different reporting formats (e.g. use of underscore or hyphen) or were inappropriate (e.g. phytoplankton).

All of the 25 Member States assessed reported that RBSPs were monitored in water in at least one water category. At the EU level 402 different RBSPs were reported to be monitored in water, 173 in sediment and 81 in biota.

The RBSPs monitored by most Member States in water, sediment and biota are shown in Figure 3.2. Metals such as chromium, copper and zinc are monitored by most Member States in all three matrices. Water is monitored by most Member States followed by sediment and biota.

Figure 3.2:    The RBSPs monitored by most Member States in water, sediment and biota.

	Data from 25 Member States for water, 13 Member States for sediment and 12 Member States for biota. Sediment equates to sediment (unspecified), suspended sediment or settled sediment. Biota equates to biota (unspecified), fish or biota other than fish. Substances reported as “other chemical substances” were excluded from the analysis. Source: WISE electronic reports.

Annex V, section 1.3.4 of the WFD provides guidance on the frequency of monitoring of the different quality elements: once every three months is recommended for “other pollutants” in water, which are taken here to equate to RBSPs. Surveillance monitoring should be carried out for each monitoring site for a period of one year during the six-year period covered by a RBMP. For RBSPs this should be done four times for the year when surveillance monitoring was undertaken, and for operational monitoring four times a year for each year of the cycle.

Figure 3.3 shows that a significant proportion of the substances monitored in water at the EU level are not monitored at least at the minimum recommended frequency at all the sites where they are monitored. For around 20 % and 35 % of the substances monitored for surveillance and operational monitoring, respectively, there are no sites where they are sampled at least at the minimum frequency.

Annex V, section 1.3.4 of the WFD does not explicitly define the matrices to which the minimum recommended frequency of monitoring of RBSPs (“Other Pollutants”) applies. Required monitoring frequencies are specified for Priority Substances in biota and sediment in Article 3(2)(c) of the EQS Directive 67 : this is once per year for operational and surveillance monitoring purposes. For consistency, this required frequency of once per year has been applied to the monitoring of RBSPs in biota/sediment.

Of the 173 different chemical substances (assumed to be RBSPs) monitored at the EU (13 Member States) level in sediment, 13 % were sampled at least at the required frequency at all of the sites where they were monitored and 34 % at none of the sites. Of the 81 different chemical substances (assumed to be RBSPs) monitored in biota, 29 % (in 12 Member States) were sampled at least at the required frequency at all of the sites where they were monitored and 4 % at none of the sites.

Figure 3.3:    Proportion of RBSPs where different proportions of sites are sampled at least at the WFD recommended minimum monitoring frequency for surveillance and operational purposes.

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Note: Numbers in brackets are the sums of the number of river basin specific pollutants monitored in the 25 Member States that reported information. Substances reported as other chemical substances were not included in the analysis because their inclusion would skew the results as many are the same substance with slightly different reporting formats (e.g. underscore or hyphen) or were inappropriate (e.g. phytoplankton).

Surveillance and operational monitoring of surface water bodies

Annex V.1.3.1 of the WFD indicates that ‘surveillance monitoring shall be carried out of sufficient surface water bodies to provide an assessment of the overall surface water status within each catchment or sub-catchments within the river basin district’. To that end, it might be expected that surveillance monitoring includes water bodies covering the range of statuses within the RBD and Member State. It is not expected that all water bodies will be included in surveillance monitoring. Representative monitoring sites should be selected to provide an overall picture of the status of water bodies in the basin.

Table 3.7    Comparison of proportion of water bodies included in surveillance and operational monitoring between the first and second RBMPs.

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Note: CW: coastal waters; LW: lakes; RW: rivers; TW: transitional waters. No allowance has been made as to whether the sites are for ecological or chemical monitoring. The cells show the number of Member States where there have been increases, decreases or no changes between the first and second RBMPs. Only the RBDs with reported information for both cycles were used in the analysis.

In the EU (24 Member States reporting information) a larger proportion of surface water bodies were included in operational monitoring than in surveillance monitoring for the first and second RBMPs. There was an increase in the proportion included in both surveillance and operational between the first and second RBMPs.

Some Member States reported an increase in the proportion of water bodies used for surveillance monitoring in all their water categories, while some reported a decrease also in all water categories.

Only very few Member States showed a decrease in the proportion of water bodies used for operational monitoring in all four water categories. In contrast, in several Member States, there were increases in the proportion of water bodies included in operational monitoring.

Assessment and classification of ecological status for surface waters

Ecological status or potential of surface water bodies

Overall, around 40 % of the surface water bodies are in good or better ecological status, while 60 % did not achieve good status (EEA 2018 68 ) (Figure 3.4). Lakes and coastal waters are in better status than rivers and transitional waters. The ecological status of natural water bodies is generally better than the ecological potential of heavily modified and AWBs.

Figure 3.4:    Ecological status/potential of rivers, lakes, transitional and coastal waters for the second RBMPs

Change in ecological status/potential between the first and second RBMPs

The overall ecological status/potential has not improved since the first RBMPs (Figure 3.5). In fact, the results show a slight reduction in the proportion of water bodies in good or better ecological status or potential for all the water body categories. Nonetheless, around 20 % (16 000 surface water bodies) have improved in ecological status/potential class since the first RBMPs, generally by one class but sometimes by 2-3 classes (EEA 2018) 69 .

Figure 3.5:    Ecological Status or potential of all surface waters, rivers, lakes, transitional and coastal waters in the two RBMPs

Confidence in ecological status assessment

Member States were asked to report the confidence on their ecological status or potential classification. The criteria used by Member States to assess confidence vary considerably, but in general low confidence may equate to no monitoring data; medium confidence to supporting quality element data and/or limited data on one biological quality element; and high confidence to good data for at least one biological quality element and the most relevant supporting quality element.

Overall, the proportion of water bodies with unknown ecological status has decreased from 16 % to 4 %, and the confidence in the classification has improved from one third of water bodies with high or medium confidence in the first RBMPs to 58 % of the water bodies in the second RBMPs (EEA 2018 70 ).

Classification of ecological status at the quality element level

a)Second RBMPs

Although a large proportion of water bodies is not classified for each single quality element (grey bars in Figure 3.6), more than two-thirds of all water bodies are classified with at least one biological quality element (EEA 2018 71 ). The most frequently classified biological quality elements are: for rivers, benthic invertebrates, phytobenthos/other aquatic flora/macrophytes and fish; for lakes, phytoplankton; and for transitional and coastal waters, phytoplankton and benthic invertebrates.

The ecological status for individual quality elements is much better than the overall ecological status classification. For rivers, for example, 50-70 % of the classified water bodies have high or good status for several biological quality elements, while the overall ecological status is only high or good for less than 40 % of the river water bodies. For the general physicochemical and hydro-morphological quality elements, more than two-thirds of the water bodies have at least GES.

Figure 3.6    Ecological status/potential of biological quality and supporting elements in rivers, lakes, transitional and coastal waters

b)Changes since the first RBMPs

It is difficult to make general comparisons of the ecological status/potential of surface waters between the first and second RBMPs because of, for example, re-delineation of water bodies and changes in monitoring programmes and assessment methods between the cycles. Recognising this difficulty, Member States were asked to report information on changes in ecological status/potential between the cycles for each water body and quality element, if the information was available.

Figure 3.7 summarises the information reported by Member States at an aggregated level for biological quality elements for each water category. For 81 % of surface water bodies there was no available information, or status or potential was unknown for the first RBMPs. Information was reported on changed status or no change in status for 31 % of coastal water, 8 % of lake, 20 % of river and 16 % of transitional water bodies.

Figure 3.7    Aggregated information of the changes between the first and second RBMPs reported for each relevant biological quality elements in each water category.

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Note: The biological quality elements relevant to each water category (as described in the WFD) were selected. As Member States had to report all quality elements irrespective of their relevance to a category, the non-relevant quality elements were removed before analysis: e.g. macroalgae in rivers. These were reported as "no information". In terms of “other aquatic flora”, it was included for a Member State where changes in status had also been reported, as more Member States classified the component elements rather than using the generic “other aquatic flora”. % of water bodies equates to the sum of water bodies that had been reported for each water category. For example if four biological quality elements had been reported for 100 water bodies, there were 400 water bodies summed in the calculation.

A total of 7 % of surface water bodies were reported to have a change in status/potential in terms of the biological quality elements between the first and second RBMPs. Member States were also asked to report the comparability and consistency of any changes in status between the two cycles, again at the quality element and water body level. Figure 3.8 summarises the reported information at the EU level. According to this information, 37 % of the improvements and 34 % of the deterioration in the status/potential of the biological quality elements in surface water bodies were reported to be consistent (as percentages of the water bodies for which there was information on changed status/potential, which was 7 % of the total). Improvements and deteriorations of status/potential that were reported to be inconsistent are due to changes to assessment methods, changes to monitoring, or both.

Figure 3.8:    Consistency of changes in ecological status/potential of the biological quality elements since the first RBMP in each water category.

Note: The biological quality elements analysed were those relevant to each water category.

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Assessment methods for the biological quality elements

Each Member State is required to develop methods to assess ecological status for all biological quality elements. Assessment methods for the supporting quality elements must be linked to the biological quality elements, according to the normative definitions given in Annex V of the WFD. Methods should be developed for the full range of quality elements to allow detection of all pressures on surface water bodies and together provide a holistic picture of the ecological status of the aquatic environment.

In most Member States, WFD-consistent assessment methods for the classification of ecological status were not fully developed for all biological quality elements in time for the first RBMPs. The most common biological methods developed were phytoplankton (chlorophyll a) in lakes and benthic fauna in rivers. The biological quality elements that were least developed in rivers were phytoplankton and macrophytes, and in lakes phytobenthos, benthic invertebrates and fish. Assessment methods showed the most gaps for transitional waters (all biological quality elements) and for coastal waters, where particularly assessment methods for macroalgae and angiosperms were fully developed only in a few Member States.

In the second RBMPs, all Member States reported methods for nutrient pollution, organic pollution and altered habitats due to morphological changes. However, almost half of the Member States that reported chemical pollution as a significant impact do not have a biological assessment method that is sensitive to chemical pollution.

Table 3.8 summarises which biological quality elements are used to assess significant impacts. It is clear that a range of elements is used to assess the various impacts. Fish and benthic invertebrates are the most commonly used to assess hydro-morphological changes and phytoplankton, macrophytes and phytobenthos for nutrient pollution.

Table 3.8    Number of Member States that reported biological assessment methods in relation to significant impacts.

Key:

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Intercalibration of biological quality element methods

To ensure comparable definitions of GES across Europe, Member States are also required to intercalibrate the GES class boundaries of their methods, for each biological quality element in each water category, with other Member States having common types of water bodies. Intercalibration is a distinct obligation at EU level in addition to the obligation to develop national ecological status methods, i.e. the lack of success of intercalibration does not exempt Member States from the obligation of developing assessment methods for all biological quality elements.

After completion of the intercalibration exercise, it is the obligation of Member States to translate the results of the intercalibration exercise into their national classification systems, in order to set the boundaries between high and good status and between good and moderate status for their national types. Ideally, the class boundaries for the national types that differ from the intercalibrated types should be set in a way that ensures a level of anthropogenic disturbance comparable to that used for the same biological quality element for the intercalibrated types. For some types that are either very specific (e.g. volcanic lakes), very rare (e.g. some large lake type that occurs only once within some Member States), or even unique in Europe, it may not be possible to translate the intercalibration results to that type. In such cases, an explanation should be given for each type about why this is not possible.

Table 3.9    Percentage of surface water bodies that were reported to have no equivalent intercalibration type.

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Notes for table: CW: coastal waters; LW: lakes; RW: rivers; TW: transitional waters.

In most Member States and for most water categories, there are significant proportions of national water bodies that are of types that do not have a common intercalibration type (Table 3.9). It is, therefore, very important that the results of the intercalibration exercise are correctly translated to national types without an equivalent intercalibration type if a comparable assessment of ecological status/potential within Member States and across the EU is to be obtained. However, there was little relevant information on this issue in the examined RBMPs.

In several RBMPs there was no information on specific methods, but a general statement that the results of the intercalibration must be translated so that the national types obtain the same level of protection as the intercalibrated types.

Assessment of hydro-morphological quality elements

The values of the hydro-morphological quality elements must be taken into account when assigning water bodies to the high ecological status class and the maximum ecological potential class (i.e. when deciding between high ecological status or maximum ecological potential and GES/potential). For the other status/potential classes, the hydro-morphological elements are required to have “conditions consistent with the achievement of the values specified 72 for the biological quality elements.”

The ranges and levels (standards) established for the hydro-morphological quality elements must support the achievement of the values required for the biological quality elements at high status or maximum potential, as relevant. Since the values for the biological quality elements at high status will be type-specific, it is reasonable to assume that the ranges and levels established for the hydro-morphological quality elements should also be type-specific. Several types may share the same ranges or levels for some or all of the hydro-morphological quality elements.

The assessment of the second RBMPs showed that standards have been set for some supporting hydro-morphological quality elements in some Member States and also that hydro-morphological standards were less well developed than those for general physico-chemical quality elements such as nutrients.

Hydrological/tidal regime was not assessed in terms of ecological status/potential in all of the RBDs where the water category is relevant (Figure 3.9). This was also the case for morphological conditions and river continuity. The water category where they were assessed in the smallest proportion of relevant RBDs was coastal waters. Also the classification boundaries of these elements were related to the class boundaries for the sensitive biological quality elements in only 36 % of RBDs for hydrological/tidal regime, 42 % for river continuity and 47 % for morphological conditions.

Figure 3.9:    Proportion of RBDs where hydro-morphological quality elements are assessed in terms of ecological status/potential and where their classification boundaries are related to the class boundaries for the sensitive biological quality elements

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Note: The numbers of RBDs where the water category is relevant are given in parentheses next to the water category. The relevance of the classification to the sensitive biological quality elements is reported only once for each QE and is therefore not water category specific.

Assessment of general physicochemical quality elements

The ranges and levels established for the general physicochemical quality elements must support the achievement of the values required for the biological quality elements at good status or good potential, as relevant. Since the values for the biological quality elements at good status will be type-specific, it is reasonable to assume that the ranges and levels established for the general physicochemical quality elements should also be type-specific.

Several types may share the same ranges or levels for some or all of the general physicochemical quality elements. If the monitoring results for the biological quality elements, the general physicochemical quality elements and RBSPs in a water body meet the conditions required for GES/potential, the overall ecological status/potential of the water body will be good. However, if one or more of the general physicochemical quality elements or river basin specific pollutants do not meet the conditions required for GES/potential but the biological quality elements do, the overall ecological status/potential will be moderate.

The assessment of the second RBMPs showed that standards have been set by some Member States for some supporting general physicochemical quality elements. However, most of the general physicochemical standards related to nutrients and organic matter are, in most cases, not clearly linked to the good/moderate class boundaries for the sensitive biological quality elements.

Figure 3.10 shows the proportion of RBDs where the general physicochemical quality elements are reported to be assessed in terms of ecological status/potential. Also shown is the proportion of RBDs where the classification boundaries of these elements are related to the class boundaries for the sensitive biological quality elements.

Figure 3.10:    Proportion of RBDs where general physicochemical quality elements are assessed in terms of ecological status/potential and where their classification boundaries are related to the class boundaries for the sensitive biological quality elements

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Note: The numbers of RBDs where the water category is relevant are given in parentheses next to the water category. The relevance of the classification to the sensitive biological quality elements is reported only once for each quality element and is therefore not water category specific.

Oxygenation and nutrient conditions are assessed in terms of ecological status/potential in most RBDs in most water categories. The classification boundaries of these elements are also reported to be related to the classification of sensitive biological quality elements in the most RBDs. However, there are gaps for the other general physicochemical quality elements, as they are not assessed in relation to ecological status/potential in over half of the RBDs (e.g. thermal conditions in all water categories).

Overall, 20 Member States (112 RBDs) reported standards for acidification, 23 Member States (137 RBDs) for nutrient conditions, 22 Member States (129 RBDs) for oxygenation conditions, 17 Member States (77 RBDs) for salinity conditions, 14 Member States (60 RBDs) for thermal conditions and 17 Member States (84 RBDs) for transparency conditions. Most standards at the RBD level (1599) were reported for nutrient conditions. Figure 3.11 shows the percentage of these that are consistent with the good-moderate status boundary of the relevant sensitive biological quality element. A large proportion (~80%) of the standards in each type of general physicochemical quality elements are consistent with the good-moderate status boundary of the relevant sensitive biological quality elements.

Figure 3.11    Percentage of reported general physicochemical standards that are consistent with the good-moderate status boundary of the relevant sensitive biological quality elements.

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Note: The numbers in the brackets are the number of standards reported at the RBD level. Note that where the same standard is reported for more than one RBD in a Member State it is counted more than once.

Selection of RBSPs and use of EQSs

Information on how RBSPs were selected is available in the RBMPs of two-thirds of the 25 Member States assessed. Several Member States reported that this selection was based on some or all of the following: the inventories of emissions, information on the use of substances, the results of monitoring, or an analysis of pressures and impacts. In some cases, the Member States mentioned the RBSP selection took into account the list from Annex VIII of the WFD or other EU legislation such as the repealed Dangerous Substances Directive (76/464/EC).

The obligation to identify RBSPs and set EQSs for them was not equally observed in the second RBMPs, with some Member States identifying many more than others, and some standards being much less stringent than others for the same substances. This has implications for the comparability of conclusions drawn regarding ecological status/potential.

The WFD (Annex V, section 1.2.6) establishes the principles to be applied by the Member States to develop EQSs for Specific Pollutants that are ‘discharged in significant quantities into the body of water’. These are also known as RBSPs. Compliance with EQSs for RBSPs forms part of the assessment of ecological status/potential. EQSs are, therefore, key tools in assessing and classifying ecological status and can therefore affect the overall ecological status/potential classification of a water body. In addition, EQSs will be used to set discharge permits to water bodies, so that chemical emissions do not lead to EQSs exceedances within the receiving water.

Technical Guidance (the 2011 Technical Guidance Document n. 27 73 ) has been developed to support the derivation of EQSs for priority substances and for RBSPs that need to be regulated by Member States according to the provisions of the WFD. The guidance focuses on the steps required to derive EQSs that comply with the requirements of Annex V of the WFD.

Tables 3.10 to 3.12 show the standards reported by Member States for RBSPs in water, biota and sediment. Standards were reported for 229 different RBSPs in water at the EU level. Standards for metals (zinc, chromium and arsenic) in water are reported by 20 of the 24 Member States that have reported information on this issue. Standards for organic substances such as toluene and xylene are reported by several Member States.

Table 3.10 Top-ten substances for which most Member States have reported EQSs for RBSPs in water

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Note: 24 Member States reported information on standards in water. Substances reported as “Other chemical parameter" were excluded from the analysis.

EQSs were reported by three Member States for nine RBSPs in biota (Table 3.11).

Table 3.11    RBSPs for which Member States have reported EQSs in biota

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Note: Substances reported as “Other chemical parameter" were excluded from the analysis.

EQSs were reported by six Member States for 36 RBSPs in sediment (Table 3.11). Standards for zinc, copper and chromium in sediment were reported by four Member States. Standards were also reported for different polychlorinated biphenyl congeners by several Member States.

Table 3.12    RBSPs for which most Member States have reported EQSs for sediment

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Note: Sediment (unspecified), settled sediment and/or suspended sediment are included. The table shows the RBSPs reported by two or more Member States. Substances reported as “Other chemical parameter" were excluded from the analysis.

A total of 64 % of the EQSs at the EU level were derived in accordance with Technical Guidance Document n. 27 (Table 3.13).

Up to 73 % of the derived standards for RBSPs in water, biota and sediment at the EU level had analytical methods that meet the minimum performance criteria laid down in Article 4(1) of the Commission Directive laying down technical specifications for chemical analysis and monitoring of water status (2009/90/EC) 74 for the strictest standard applied (Table 3.13). Of the remaining 167 EQSs 89 % have analytical methods which are in line with Article 4(2) of the same Directive (Table 3.14).

Table 3.13:    Number of standards for RBSPs for which the analytical method used meets the minimum performance criteria laid down in Article 4(1) of the Commission Directive laying down technical specifications for chemical analysis and monitoring of water status (2009/90/EC) for the strictest standard applied.

Source: WISE electronic reports.

Note: Substances reported as “Other chemical parameter" were excluded from the analysis.

Table 3.14:    Number of standards for RBSPs where the analytical method corresponds to the requirements laid down in Article 4(2) of the Commission Directive laying down technical specifications for chemical analysis and monitoring of water status (2009/90/EC) for the strictest standard applied.