Monitoring of Drinking Water Directive needs to improve

The European Commission DG Environment recently conducted an evaluation of the effectiveness, efficiency, coherence, relevance and added value of the EU Drinking Water Directive. The study concluded the Drinking Water Directive is in general relevant, but the frequency and quality of the Member States reports needs to improve.

According to the study, the European Commission should encourage benchmarking in the drinking water sector regionally and nationally. The Commission is not planning to start cross-county benchmarking. The affordability of water services requires attention as well as the transparency and access by consumers / citizens to information. Access to safe drinking water is a right for citizens and an obligation for all Member States;

Old data
The current reporting system is not suited to provide practical information to citizens and consumers: the current provisions result in drinking water quality data being published which are partly almost five years old. They can therefore inter alia be an instrument on trends analysis, but without doubt not a general citizens’ and consumers’ information tool.