Today, ministers in the Environment Council adopted Council conclusions on water resilience. They stressed the urgent need to step up implementation and enforcement of EU water rules, but lacked teeth to reduce water demand to sustainable levels.

The Living Rivers Europe (LRE) coalition welcomes the Council’s recognition of the urgent need for proper implementation and enforcement of existing EU water legislation. Building a water-smart economy does not require legislative simplification (code for the Commission’s increasingly aggressive deregulation agenda), but rather consistency of the legal framework, and clarity of vision and common policy goals.

The Council recognises the importance of nature-based solutions to tackle water scarcity and mitigate floods. Restoring and protecting ecosystems is fundamental for safeguarding the water cycle, the first pillar of the EU’s Water Resilience Strategy. But in terms of making it a reality, the conclusions fall short by failing to call for earmarked funds for nature-based solutions or the redirection of harmful subsidies.

The Living Rivers Europe coalition says:

The support from Member States for better implementation of existing EU water legislation across sectors sends a much-needed signal to the European Commission that the EU water acquis is here to stay. Today’s conclusions show that national governments recognise nature-based solutions as key to achieving water resilience, restoring and protecting our damaged water cycles, and tackling water scarcity. The European Commission needs to hear the message: the Water Framework Directive must not be targeted in the next Omnibus package.

With public budgets constrained across Europe, it is welcome that the Council conclusions highlight the importance of making full use of the economic instruments of the Water Framework Directive to recover costs of water services. However, they fail to recognise the Extended Producer Responsibility (a scheme that involves polluters to cover 80% of the cost to remove micropollutants from wastewater) of the EU’s updated Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive.

Ministers also called on Member States and the Commission to integrate water resilience more systematically across funding, policies and sectors – including agriculture. However, it ignores the hierarchy of measures of the “Water Efficiency First principle” by not recognizing that non-conventional water resources, such as desalination, should only be a complementary last measure to demand reduction and water efficiency measures. Additionally, by focusing on efficiency rather than reducing water demand, the conclusions risk failing to deliver on urgently needed reductions of water abstraction to sustainable levels across Europe.

ENDS

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Notes to editor:

• Living Rivers Europe is an alliance of NGOs committed to the defense of freshwater ecosystems and their sustainable management in the EU. It includes the European Anglers Alliance, the European Environmental Bureau, the European Rivers Network, The Nature Conservancy, Wetlands International and WWF, representing a movement of over 40 million European citizens.
• On 4 June the European Commission adopted the European Water Resilience Strategy that aims to restore and protect the water cycle, secure clean and affordable water for all and create a sustainable, resilient, smart and competitive water-economy in Europe.
• The Water Resilience Strategy put a strong emphasis on implementation of existing EU laws aiming to protect water and nature as a cornerstone for resilience.
• On 22 July the Commission launched a public consultation on ‘simplification of administrative burdens in environmental legislation’. The European Commission is expected to present the so-called Environmental Omnibus in November.
• Several industrial actors, including chemical industry and the mining and metals sector are lobbying for the Water Framework Directive to be included in the environmental omnibus so that its scientifically backed objectives can be weakened which in turn will undermine the resilience of our ecosystems.
• Close to 200,000 people responded to the consultation urging the European Commission avoid any rollback of EU environmental laws under the guise of ‘simplification’.

See the Living Rivers Europe NGO coalition’s recommendations to strengthen water resilience in Europe.

[Joint Press Release published by the Living Rivers Europe coalition, of which the EEB is a member]

For more information please contact:

Ben Snelson, Communications Officer, European Environmental Bureau, benedict.snelson@eeb.org