An Indispensable Resource: EU Freshwater
Policy
CHAPTER 1: introduction
1. In continental Europe, rivers often form the
boundaries between Member States, or flow out of the territory
of one into that of another. They link and integrate the pressures
that society places on our use of both water and land. European
legislation on different aspects of freshwater quality has a history
going back over several decades, and several pieces of this legislation
agreed before 2000 are still in force.
2. Water stress varies significantly across the
EU. The map at Appendix 6 demonstrates this variation, and shows
that high stress is a feature in Member States as diverse as Cyprus
and the Republic of Ireland.
3. In 2000 the EU agreed the Water Framework
Directive (WFD), with the intention of taking an integrated approach
to the management of water resources, setting out a longer-term
framework within which Member States would be required to act.
All Member States have been required to produce River Basin Management
Plans (RBMPs) by 2009, and these provide the basis for protecting,
improving and maintaining the environmental condition of surface
and ground waters by certain milestone dates: 2015, 2021 and 2027.
Member States should aim to ensure that, by the final date of
2027, all rivers and water bodies have reached, or have maintained,
"good" or "high" status, and their progress
towards that objective is to be reported at the earlier milestone
dates (see Box 1). Infraction proceedings are triggered under
the WFD after 2015 if the mechanisms for delivery are deemed to
be insufficient to achieve the objectives, rather than whether
all water bodies have met "good" or "high"
status.
4. EU freshwater policy contains other elements,
but the WFD is of over-arching importance. Existing directives
have already brought into force measures that are relevant to
the implementation of the WFD. These include some under which
the UK has previously been subject to infraction proceedings,
such as the Urban Waste Water Treatment (91/271/EEC), Shellfish
(79/932/EEC) and Nitrates (91/675/EEC) Directives. Other directives
also clarify and co-ordinate WFD objectives to be in RBMPs, such
as the Environmental Quality Standards Directive (2008/105/EC),
which sets out limits on concentrations of the priority substances
in surface waters; the list of priority substances is currently
under revision.
5. Most (though not all) Member States have produced
RBMPs. Since 2010, the European Commission has reviewed EU freshwater
policy, with a particular focus on the WFD. This has included
a preliminary study, or "fitness check", of the relevance,
coherence, effectiveness and efficiency of EU freshwater policy.
The study's findings were expected to be published in spring 2012.
6. This fitness check in turn underpins the Commission's
"Blueprint to Safeguard Europe's Water Resources" to
be published at the end of 2012, with the aim of ensuring good
quality water in sufficient quantities for all authorised uses.
The Commission has said that the Blueprint will be the policy
response to the challenges to water resource management posed
by implementation issues arising out of the current EU policy
framework, and by the need to develop measures to tackle water
availability and water quantity problems. While the time horizon
of the Blueprint will be 2020, the underpinning analysis will
cover a time-span up to 2050.[1]
In March 2012, the Commission launched a consultation process
on potential policy options, seeking comments by June.
7. The need to consider water protection issues
extends to other EU policies. In the last two years, this committee
has reported on the adaptation of EU agriculture and forestry
to climate change,[2] and
on innovation in EU agriculture.[3]
Both inquiries highlighted water resource management as a key
policy consideration. Our report on innovation also placed these
concerns in the context of proposals for the reform of the Common
Agricultural Policy (CAP), and for the future approach to EU support
for research and innovation.[4]
8. We decided to conduct this inquiry in order
to offer our own views on the future direction of EU freshwater
policy at a time when the Commission, Member States and other
interested groups were engaged in the discussions leading up to
the Blueprint. We issued our call for evidence in July 2011 and
we took oral evidence from a range of EU and UK witnesses between
October 2011 and March 2012. Our findings are of particular relevance
to the UK, and to the UK's implementation of EU water legislation.
We have also drawn on the experience of other, largely Northern,
EU Member States, and recognise that there are particular issues
of water resource management elsewhere in the EU, for example,
inter-country management issues or the extreme problems of water
stress in Southern European countries, which we have not explored
in this inquiry. The Commission's Blueprint will address water
resources across the whole of the EU; we shall be closely interested
in the way in which it shapes its proposals to reflect the variety
of conditions across the EU.
9. The members of the Agriculture, Fisheries
and Environment Sub-Committee who carried out the inquiry are
listed in Appendix 1, which shows their declared interests. We
are grateful for the written and oral evidence that was submitted
to the inquiry; the witnesses who provided it are shown in Appendix
2. We are also grateful to Professor Bob Harris, Visiting Professor
of Catchment Science at the University of Sheffield, and Dr Jonny
Wentworth, Environment and Energy Adviser in the Parliamentary
Office of Science and Technology, who acted as specialist advisers
to the inquiry.
10. The call for evidence is shown in Appendix
3. The evidence received is published online.
11. We make this report to the House for debate.
1 See Annex A to European Commission's written evidence. Back
2
8th Report (2009-10), HL Paper 91. Back
3
19th Report (2010-12), HL Paper 171. Back
4
In October 2011, the European Commission presented legislative
proposals for CAP reform. See: http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/cap-post-2013/legal-proposals/index_en.htm
In November 2011, the Commission presented its "Horizon 2020"
proposals for EU funding for research and innovation between 2014
and 2020. See:http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020/index_en.cfm?pg=h2020
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