Brussels, 26 February 2026 — A roundtable on Europe’s flagship water law, the Water Framework Directive (WFD), is scheduled for 2 March in Stockholm and will be chaired by Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall, the EU’s first Commissioner with Water in her title. The invite list, as currently understood, is dominated by Sweden’s mining and steel interests, while civil society participation is severely limited, raising concerns about who gets to have a say about water laws. 

This matters because changes to the WFD are not abstract. They translate into what people can drink, where children can swim, whether rivers and wetlands can filter pollution, and how expensive it becomes to treat water for households and communities. 

This meeting comes as the EU’s raw materials agenda increasingly treats environmental rules as a bottleneck to “strategic” extraction and processing, and as the Commission has already announced its intention to “revise” the WFD in 2026, explicitly “to promote access to raw materials in the EU”. At a decisive moment for Europe’s water law, the European Environmental Bureau warns that allowing mining and metals interests to dominate the discussion risks diluting water protections for people and nature.

If Europe’s water law is weakened in response to pressure from high-polluting sectors, it would mark a turning point in EU environmental policy and raise serious questions about governance and transparency. Decisions of this magnitude must be based on evidence and the public interest, with meaningful participation from civil society and the communities that depend on clean water.

This media briefing sets out why the Stockholm roundtable risks narrowing the debate at a decisive moment for Europe’s water protections, what is at stake for clean water and public health, and what the Commission must do to restore trust and uphold its responsibility to protect people and the environment. 

What is at stake: clean water, public health, resilience 

The WFD exists to prevent pollution, stop deterioration, and protect rivers, lakes, groundwater and wetlands – the source of water for people, nature and all economic activities. It shapes the quality of drinking water, the health of ecosystems, and the resilience of communities facing droughts, floods, and contamination. 

The scale of the problem is already stark. Only 39.5 percent of EU surface waters are in good ecological status. That points to an implementation and delivery gap, not a case for lowering standards. 

There is also a real economic cost to failure. Not achieving good status for surface waters is estimated to forgo around €51.1 billion a year in benefits. Turning water safeguards into a negotiable constraint for mining projects risks entrenching that failure and pushing more costs onto citizens and public budgets for clean-up and health. 

Extractive operations can severely pollute water through metal contamination, including mercury, and can reshape entire waterways. In practice, “weakening the WFD” means lowering environmental requirements for high impact sectors. That leads to more pollution and degradation, and the consequences are carried by drinking water suppliers, local authorities, communities, and everyone who depends on healthy rivers and groundwater. 

Sara Johansson, Senior Policy Officer for Water at the EEB, said: “Sacrificing our water for the mining sector would be a reckless move: not only will this allow for more pollution in our drinking water and degradation of our rivers, lakes and groundwater, it will also set a dangerous precedent to reward laggards and punish frontrunners that have invested in water treatment.” 

Mining sector in the driver’s seat 

As mining interests push to weaken Europe’s flagship water law in the name of faster permitting and less oversight, the Stockholm roundtable risks giving that pressure disproportionate weight. It will bring together mining, metals, and steel industry actors and their associations, including Svemin and Jernkontoret, alongside major companies such as LKAB, Boliden, and SSAB. Swedish public agencies are also expected to attend, while civil society voices appear sidelined, with participation reduced to only observatory role and major civil society organisations excluded. 

Holding this discussion on the future direction of the EU’s water law behind closed doors in Stockholm, with a narrow set of heavy industry voices, fuels doubts about transparency and balance. If the Commission wants a credible EU level conversation about the water law, it should be open to scrutiny and base the debate on evidence, reflect EU wide public interest, and be accessible to a wider set of stakeholders, including those who rely on clean water and those who bear the risks and much of the costs when safeguards are weakened. 

Civil society has already warned against accelerating permitting for mining and processing while sidestepping proper environmental assessment, land use planning, and nature protection. Water protection, as well as other health and nature laws, is increasingly pushed to the side when speed becomes the overriding priority. 

Diego Marin, Senior Policy Officer for Raw Materials and Resource Justice at the EEB, said: “If mining and steel are in the driving seat on weakening Europe’s water law, the rest of society will be dragged along for the ride. That is not balanced consultation. It is agenda-setting behind closed doors.” 

The European Environmental Bureau (EEB) urges the European Commission to: 

• Reconsider the announced push to review and revise the Water Framework Directive. The WFD was evaluated recently and deemed fit for purpose. The priority should be closing implementation and enforcement gaps that are already holding Europe back on water quality. 

• Maintain full public access to information and participation in all discussions affecting EU water law, including by publishing the agenda, full invite list, and any briefing materials shared with participants, and by making the outcomes public afterwards, including the range of views expressed. 

• Guarantee that water and nature safeguards are not weakened to accelerate mining and processing projects. Europe’s water protections must not be treated as a negotiable constraint in the name of speed, competitiveness, or “strategic” extraction. 

• Ensure that raw materials governance does not override environmental rules, proper environmental assessments, land use planning, and nature protection, and that public interest voices and affected communities are meaningfully included beyond observer roles. 

Europe must not sell its people’s health, nature and resilience to join a race for minerals. 

ENDS