EurEau newsletter - February 2025
EurEau News
Speaking out
Oliver Loebel, EurEau Secretary General, presented water sector priorities to the Finnish association of municipalities on 17 February (Brussels).
Martin Silic, EurEau Policy Advisor, will speak at the 2nd regular meeting of recipients of the Tap Water Certificate of Slovenia on 22 March.
EU news
Legislative developments
Water Resilience Strategy (WRS): call for evidence
The European Commission has launched a call for evidence from stakeholders in designing the future European Water Resilience Strategy. EurEau will respond to the ‘call for evidence’ before the 4 March deadline.
The European Parliament published its draft own initiative report on Water Resilience calling for dedicated water funding, addressing pollution at the source and embedding water resilience “into all EU policies”. The draft Report, authored by rapporteur Thomas Bajada (S&D, Malta), will be opened to amendments by the Parliament’s ENVI and AGRI committees before a final vote in Plenary tentatively scheduled for early May.
We welcome the Draft Report’s recommendations and have submitted proposals to strengthen the protection of water resources.
Water legislation
A plethora of packages, deals and plans
The Commission published several ‘collections’ of legislation on 26 February.
- The Commission proposal for the , addressing, Taxonomy reporting CSRD, CSDD and CBAM.
- including the Action Plan for affordable energy. You can find it .
Water and agriculture
Agriculture and Food: EU presents vision
The European Commission published its Vision for Agriculture and Food, (19.02.25) setting out Europe’s strategy to develop a fair, competitive and sustainable food supply chain by 2040 and beyond.
While the vision contains some positive elements, it is disappointingly vague on the link between this Vision and the forthcoming Water Resilience Strategy. The protection of our scarce (drinking) water resources is not given priority.
Read the EurEau reaction here.
Water and the environment
EurEau Response to European Commission Report on Water Quality
The European Commission released a series of reports on 5 February, highlighting the state of Europe’s water bodies. The findings confirm that most of these water bodies are polluted with mercury and other toxic chemicals, requiring urgent action to meet EU freshwater quality and quantity standards.
EurEau has long called for the EU to take decisive action to halt and reverse the degradation of our water resources. You can read the full reaction from EurEau here.
Water as an essential service
Public Procurement Rules: Commission assesses fitness
The Commission launched the evaluation of three legislative acts that regulate public procurement in the EU (‘how to buy’): Directives 2014/23/EU (Concessions Directive), 2014/24/EU (Public Procurement Directive) and 2014/25/EU (Utilities Directive). It will assess their performance and impact across the EU, whether they remain fit for purpose, deliver on their intended objectives at minimum cost and are adequate to address current challenges. A call for evidence and public consultation were opened on the Have your say portal. The deadline is 7 March 2025.
Update of rules under the INSPIRE Directive: Launch of public consultation
The Commission launched a public consultation procedure on the impact assessment to identify and assess policy options and define the scope of the revised INSPIRE Directive. While EurEau supports efforts to increase the access of environmentally relevant spatial data to the public, the EU legislation must ensure the protection of critical infrastructure/essential services to prevent malicious acts and protect people’s health and the environment. Hence, restrictions must be maintained regarding public access to information on water abstraction points, underground water utility networks and production/treatment facilities.
The consultation is open for feedback during 05 February–30 April 2025 and accessible at the ‘’. The legislative proposal is planned in Q4 2025.
The directive establishes the data infrastructure necessary to support EU environmental policies with spatial information. This helps to provide access to environmental data and makes it easier to share information from and between public authorities, for instance when managing cross-border crises e.g., floods.
Other news
Commission publishes its 2025 Work Programme
On 11 February the European Commission published its , that sets out the key strategies, action plans and legislative initiatives that will be addressed during this year. The Work Programme is built around four blocks:
- Sustainable prosperity and competitiveness: we will follow the Three Omnibus packages, Clean Industrial Deal and Affordable Energy Action Plan, REACH Revision, and Bioeconomy Strategy.
- European Defense and Security: we will pay special attention to the Preparedness Union Strategy, Stockpiling Strategy, and Critical Medicines Act.
- Sustaining our quality of life: food security, water and nature: we will focus on the Vision for Agriculture and Food, Water Resilience Strategy, and CAP Simplification package
- Delivering together & preparing our Union for the future: we will track the Post-2027 MFF (including Competitiveness Fund and Competitiveness Coordination Tool), and the pre-enlargement policy reviews & reforms.
EBC Foundation: New benchmarking cycle launched!
The EBC Foundation, of which EurEau is a founder member, offers drinking water and wastewater companies from Europe and beyond a benchmarking- and improvement programme for water services.
Every year, the EBC organises a benchmarking exercise (performance assessment and knowledge exchange activities) to learn from each other’s good practices and innovations. Currently, the EBC is preparing the 19th edition (based on 2024 data) and invites water- and wastewater utilities from across Europe to join.
Information about the new benchmarking cycle is available at EBC’s website www.waterbenchmark.org. The exercise kicks off on 6 May 2025 and runs till 4 December 2025. Part of the exercise is the annual benchmarking workshop, which will take place on 12-14 November 2025 (preliminary dates).
Utilities who register via EurEau receive an introductory discount of 10% (just for this year’s cycle, using the promocode “EBCEurEau2025”), provided they have not participated in the EBC benchmarking programme in the last three years.
As an optional extra activity, EBC plans to organise a Knowledge Picnic on sustainability reporting on 14/15 May 2025.
If you would like to know more about the EBC programme and participation, you may contact programme coordinator Viktoria Iskova via
EBC welcomes all interested European water- and wastewater utilities to join the programme!
Drinking water treatment: JRC study on modelling methods
The EU’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) a study recommending the use of artificial neural networks (ANN) as decision support tools for drinking water treatment plant operators. The study shows that ANN perform better than an alternative modelling method (multiple linear regression) when predicting chemical dosages used in drinking water treatment.
‘Flushability’ of Products: Proposed ISO Standard provisionally rejected
The international standards organisation ISO failed to gather sufficient support for the draft standard on ‘Test methodologies for assessing products suitable to be flushed down a toilet and appropriate labelling’.
EurEau welcomes the outcome of this vote, as experience shows that ‘flushability’ labels cause harm to the wastewater system and the water environment by promoting or resulting in an increase in the flushing of inappropriate items to the sewer network. All items should be labelled as ‘do not flush’.
The draft now has to go back to ISO, who will discuss the comments received on 25 and 27 March.
More information here.
Events
10-14 March 2025 - Amsterdam International Water Week;
11-14 March 2025 - , Amsterdam
31 March 2025 - – online 10-16 EEST
24-28 August 2025 – , Oslo
23-25 September 2025 - SIWI , Stockholm
- Created on .