The water policy of the
European
Union is primarily codified in three
directives:
- The Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (91/271/EEC) of 21
May 1991 concerning discharges of municipal and some industrial
waste waters;
- The Drinking Water Directive (98/83/EC) of 3 November 1998
concerning potable water quality;
- The Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) of 23 October 2000
concerning water resources
management.
EU member states have enacted national legislation in accordance
with these directives. The institutional organization of public
water supply and sanitation does not fall under the purview of the
EU, but remains a prerogative of each member state.
Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive of 1991
Content
This Council Directive on Urban Waste Water Treatment concerns the
collection, treatment and discharge of urban waste water and the
treatment and discharge of waste water from certain industrial
sectors. Its aim is to protect the environment from any adverse
effects due to discharge of such waters.
According to the directive's timetable:
- by 31 December 1998: all agglomerations of more than 10 000
"population equivalent" (p.e.) which discharge water into sensitive
areas had to have a proper collection and treatment system
requiring meeting the most stringent quality standards, usually
referred to as tertiary treatment (Art. 5);
- by 31 December 2000: agglomerations of more than 15 000 p.e.
outside sensitive areas had to have a collection and treatment
system which enables them to satisfy less stringent requirements,
usually referred to as secondary treatment (Art. 4);
- by 31 December 2005: all agglomerations of between 2 000 and 10
000 p.e. which discharge water into sensitive areas, and all
agglomerations of between 2 000 and 15 000 p.e. which do not
discharge into such areas had to have a collection and treatment
system (Art. 3).
However, in the case of Spain changes were made at the time of
transposing the Directive. In Article 2 of the Directive, a
collecting system means “a system of conduits which collects and
conducts urban waste water” and therefore all sewers and drains,
both public and private were included. However, in the Spanish
transposition (Real Decreto-Ley 11/1995 of December 28 1995), the
definition of a collecting system was changed to mean “all systems
of conduits which collect and conduct urban waste water, from the
municipal sewer and drainage networks and go to the treatment
plants.” The added words mean that when the Spanish definition is
applied to Article 3 of the Directive the municipal sewer and
drainage networks are excluded. If the municipal network did not
exist, as in the case of many urbanizations (housing estates)
developed in the 1960s and 1970s and within agglomerations of over
2000 p.e. no collecting system needed to be provided at all, under
the Real Decreto-Ley 11/1995. Obviously if waste water is not
collected it cannot be treated, therefore the changed definition
also affected Article 4 of the Directive. Even so, Spain had to and
still has to comply fully with the Directive.On March 5 2009, the
Catalan Autonomous Government finally approved a law (La Llei de la
millora d’urbanizacions) to deal with deficits of infrastructures,
such as sewers in urbanizations in Catalonia, 18 years after the
Directive was approved by the European Parliament.
The directive also allows the establishment of less sensitive
coastal areas, for which primary treatment would be sufficient, if
it can be shown that there is no adverse impact on the environment
(Art. 6).
Member states had to establish lists of sensitive areas. It has
been estimated that in 2004 about 34 percent of the pollutant load
from wastewater that falls under the scope of the directive is
discharged into sensitive areas.
This Directive was amended by the Commission Directive
98/15/EC.
Implementation challenges
Commission Decision 93/481/EEC
defines the information that Member States should provide the
Commission on the state of implementation of the Directive .
The
European
Commission
published three reports on the implementation of
the directive, the latest in 2004. The report noted that the
wastewater treatment situation in Europe is still very
unsatisfactory and that none of the deadlines has been met by all
member countries. Only Austria, Denmark and Germany fully complied
with the directive. The report noted that
BOD levels in European rivers have
been reduced by 20-30 percent since the enactment of the directive,
but that other pollution parameters such as nitrogen levels
remained high. The reason is that much of the nitrogen pollution
comes from non-point sources in agriculture, and the still
insufficient nutrient removal by wastewater treatment plants.
The
eutrophication of the Baltic Sea
, North
Sea
and considerable parts of the Mediterranean
thus remains a "severe problem". The report
also noted that it is estimated that more than 50 percent of the
discharges into sensitive areas was not treated sufficiently. Even
for non-sensitive areas, although the picture was less bleak, only
69% of the discharge received treatment and the 2000 deadline was
not met by most member countries. 25 out of 556 cities in the EU
still had no wastewater treatment system at all.
The directive triggered substantial investment in
wastewater treatment throughout the EU.
A controversial aspect of the directive is the requirement for all
agglomerations with more than 2 000 inhabitants to have a
wastewater collection system, which has been widely interpreted as
requiring connection to a
sewer
system even if existing on-site sanitation systems perform
adequately. The cost of connecting houses to sewers in small rural
towns with dispersed housing patterns is often very high and
imposes a high financial burden on users.
According to the European Commission, the directive represents
the most cost intensive European legislation in the
environmental sector. The EU estimates that 152 billion
Euro were invested in wastewater treatment from 1990 to 2010
(sic!). The EU provides support for the implementation of the
directive in the order of 5 billion Euro per year.
Drinking water directive of 1998
Content
A leaking tap.
The Directive is intended to protect human health by laying down
healthiness and purity requirements which must be met by drinking
water within the Community (see
water
quality). It applies to all water intended for human
consumption apart from natural mineral waters and waters which are
medicinal products.
Member States shall ensure that such
drinking water:
- does not contain any concentration of micro-organisms, parasites or any other substance which constitutes
a potential human health risk;
- meets the minimum requirements (microbiological and chemical
parameters and those relating to radioactivity) laid down by the
directive.
- They will take any other action needed in order to guarantee
the healthiness and purity of water intended for human
consumption.
In setting contaminant levels the directive applies the
precautionary principle. For
example, the EU contaminant levels for
pesticides are up to 20 times lower than those in
the WHO drinking water guidelines
[413081], because the EU directive not only aims at
protecting human health but also the environment. The WHO
contaminant levels themselves are already set so that there would
be no potential risk if the contaminant was absorbed continuously
over a person's lifetime.
[413082] EU drinking water standards and cases where
these standards are temporarily exceeded by a small margin should
be interpreted in this context.
Compared to the previous European drinking water directive of 1980
the number of parameters has been reduced, allowing member to add
parameters such as
magnesium, total
hardness,
phenols,
zinc,
phosphate,
calcium and
chlorite.
The directive requires member states to regularly monitor the
quality of water intended for human consumption by using the
methods of analysis specified in the directive, or equivalent
methods.
Member states also have to publish drinking
water quality reports every three years, and the European
Commission is to publish a summary report. Within five
years Member States had to comply with the Directive. Exemptions
can be granted on a temporary basis, provided that they do not
affect human health.
Implementation challenges and planned revision
Until 2006 the European Commission has not published a summary
report on drinking water quality. No EU country achieves full
compliance with the directive, mainly because of the geological
nature of its soil and agricultural activity. in 2003 the European
Commission initiated a broad consultation process to prepare a
revision of the Directive. One key aspect of the revision would be
to move away from a pure end-of-pipe standard setting approach.
Instead the whole water supply process from the basin to the tap
would be assessed to identify risk and the most effective control
points, through so-called
Water safety
plans.
Water Framework Directive of 2000
Content
Under this Directive, member states have to identify all the
river basins lying within their national
territory and assign them to individual river basin districts. By
22 December 2003 at the latest, a competent authority had to be
designated for each of the river basin districts. In addition,
member states have to analyze the characteristics of each river
basin and have to carry out an economic analysis of water use. Nine
years after the entry into force of the directive, a management
plan must be produced for each river basin district. The measures
provided for in the river basin management plan seek to:
- prevent deterioration, enhance and restore bodies of surface
water, achieve good chemical and ecological status of such water
and reduce pollution from discharges and emissions of hazardous substances;
- protect, enhance and restore all bodies of groundwater, prevent the pollution and
deterioration of groundwater, and ensure a balance between
abstraction and recharge of groundwater;
- preserve protected areas.
By 2010, Member States must ensure that water pricing policies
provide adequate incentives for users to use water resources
efficiently and that the various economic sectors contribute to the
recovery of the costs of water services including those relating to
the environment and resources. This cost recovery rule is expected
to impact particularly irrigated agriculture, where users have not
paid the full costs of water supply.
At the
latest twelve years after the date of entry into force of the
Directive, the European Commission has to publish a report on the implementation of
the Directive.
Implementation challenges
Some countries, such as France and Spain, had already established
basin agencies before the enactment of the directive. They should
thus find it easy to implement that part of the directive. Other
countries that have historically managed their water resources
through institutions whose geographical limits were determined by
administrative boundaries, such as in the case of Germany where the
states (Laender) manage water resources, are in the process of
setting up coordinating mechanisms for each river basin. Other
elelements of the directive, such as the protection of groundwater
and cost recovery rules, may be more difficult to implement,
especially in Southern member countries that have extensive
irrigated agriculture.
In March 2007 the EU commission published its first progress report
on the implementation of the EU Framework Directive. The report
notes mixed results. Almost all member countries have transposed
the directive into national law, but the report notes that "the
legal transposition of the Directive in national law is poor and in
many cases inadequate". Indeed, the report finds that only in three
countries the national law (Austria, Malta and Portugal) is in
conformity with the Directive. Furthermore, there have been
significant delays in the analysis of the characteristics of each
river basin. Since the establishment of this knowledge base is a
precondition for Basin Plans, this delay jeopardizes progress of
the implementation of the entire Directive.
Notes
See also
Water supply and sanitation by Member States
Further reading
- Finger, Matthias, Jeremy Allouche, Patricia Luis-Manso: Water
and Liberalisation. European Water Scenarios. International Water
Association 2007, ISBN 1843391139.
- Mandri-Perrott:Developing Sustainable Legal Mechanisms for
Private Sector Participation in the International Water and
Wastewater Sector. International Water Association 2008, ISBN
184339118X.
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