European Union: Executive summary This fitness check is a comprehensive policy evaluation of the following directives: – the Water Framework Directive (WFD); – the Environmental Quality Standards Directive (EQSD); – the Groundwater Directive (GWD); – the Floods Directive (FD). It assesses whether the Directives are fit for purpose by examining their performance against five criteria set out in the Commission’s Better Regulation agenda: effectiveness, efficiency, coherence, relevance and EU added value. The results for the Water Framework Directive, complemented by the Environmental Quality Standards Directive and the Groundwater Directive, are mixed. On the one hand, the WFD has been successful in setting up a governance framework for integrated water management for the more than 110,000 water bodies in the EU, slowing down the deterioration of water status and reducing (mainly point source) chemical pollution. On the other hand, no substantial progress in water bodies’ overall status has been made between the first and the second river basin management cycles. The Directive’s implementation has been significantly delayed and less than half of the EU’s water bodies are in good status, even though the deadline for achieving this was 2015, except for duly justified cases. For the Floods Directive it is too early to draw conclusions, as its first implementation cycle only started in 2016, but this fitness check finds that the Directive has improved flood risk management. Click here to read more

Angling Trust    ‘The European Commission has completed its review of the Water Framework Directive after pressure from a number of member states to reduce some of the requirements it places on countries to protect and improve rivers and water bodies. The EU has concluded the Water Framework Directive is “fit for purpose”, acknowledging that the objectives of the law “are as relevant now as they were at the time of the adoption” and that the law has led to “a higher level of protection for water bodies and flood risk management”.

This concludes the two-year evaluation of the Water Framework Directive and, by discarding the possibility of revision, sets the EU back on course to bring life back to its rivers through full implementation and enforcement of the law. This is exactly what the European Anglers Alliance, including the Angling Trust, had called for, as part of the Living Rivers Europe coalition. Protecting EU waters is crucial for healthy fish stocks and thus for the recreational fishing sector.

The message from the European Commission is clear: the Water Framework Directive is a critical pillar of the EU’s environmental legislation and is here to stay in its current form. The results of this review highlight that the delay in reaching the Water Framework Directive’s objectives is “largely due to insufficient funding, slow implementation and insufficient integration of environmental objectives in sectoral policies, and not due to a deficiency in the legislation.”

The conclusions come hot on the heels of the European Environment Agency’s State of the Environment Report 2020, which highlighted the Water Framework Directive as being essential to halting and reversing biodiversity loss. The conclusions are strongly supported by WWF, European Environment Bureau, Wetlands International, the European Rivers Network and European Anglers Alliance – who together form the Living Rivers Europe coalition and led the #ProtectWater campaign to safeguard the Water Framework Directive.’

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