Addressing the pollution of water resources in the context of the European Green Deal with its Zero Pollution Action Plan (ZPAP) is fundamental for the continued provision of safe and affordable drinking and waste water services, whose essential mission is to protect human health and the aquatic environment.

EurEau fully supports the zero pollution ambition and calls on the Commission to put water front and centre of the plan. Besides this, we expect that the water sector is not left to act alone: industry and agriculture have an important role to play in controlling pollution and rectifying environmental damage as much as possible at the source.

The action plan should propose concrete actions rather than focussing solely on establishing monitoring frameworks and promoting digital tools. Monitoring and digitalisation are part of the solution. However, the substantial amount of scientific data already available allows for ambitious legislative actions to be taken now, according to the following recommendations:

• apply stringent authorisation for hazardous substances and consider REACH as the general key instrument to control hazardous substances
• apply effective prevention and rectification at the source
• implement the Polluter Pays Principle for mitigating measures through, inter alia, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) mechanisms
• make EU legislation and EU Green Deal strategies coherent
• mainstream the water resources protection objectives in sectorial legislation
• foster innovative solutions for realistic tasks.

Read our recommendations here.