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From helping shape the EU Water Resilience Strategy to defending the Polluter Pays Principle, advocating for stronger protection against PFAS, and celebrating 50 years of bringing Europe’s water professionals together, 2025 showed why water must remain at the heart of Europe’s future.

Inside the report you’ll find:
💧 Our policy achievements
💧 Key advocacy milestones
💧 New publications and technical work
💧 The people and partnerships behind our work
💧 What comes next for Europe’s water sector

Thank you to all our members, experts and partners who contributed throughout the year.

Europe’s water services providers continue to deliver safe drinking water and wastewater services to most people across the continent. But behind this strong performance, ageing infrastructure, rising costs and new environmental challenges are putting future resilience at risk.

An overview of Europe’s water stats in 2025

We are pleased to share our 2024 Annual Report, showcasing our collective achievements and ongoing work to safeguard Europe’s water services. Despite political uncertainty and environmental setbacks, we advanced key policies, including the revised Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive, pushed for a robust PFAS ban, and continued advocating for a comprehensive Water Resilience Strategy.

Discover how our members, experts and partners are shaping a resilient, sustainable future for water in Europe.

Read the full report here.

In our paper – PFAS Phase Out: A Prerequisite for a Water Resilient Europe – we highlight the continued threat that PFAS pose to human health and the environment. We urge the European Commission to act now to ban these toxic chemicals.

Known as ‘forever chemicals,’ PFAS are present in our food, air, water and everyday products. Their persistence, mobility, and toxicity create far-reaching challenges for Europe’s water services.

2023 was a year of both achievement and challenge in our ongoing mission to protect Europe’s water resources. We made significant strides with key legislative advancements such as the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (UWWTD), the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED), Environmental Quality Standards and the Groundwater Directives (EQSD and GWD), sending a strong message that polluters must be held accountable. However, we faced setbacks along the way. Despite these hurdles, we remained steadfast, knowing that our work is crucial for the sustainable future of our water services.

As we look to 2024, we are committed to continuing our efforts with renewed focus and collaboration, ensuring that water remains at the heart of Europe’s resilience and prosperity.

Read more about our work in our 2023 Annual Report.

Our water services of tomorrow – Let’s make change happen

The water services sector has the ambition to play a front-running role in Europe’s journey to building climate-neutral, circular, smart and resilient society. To achieve this, water services will work with local and EU level policy makers to maximise the latest innovative technologies and practices, by digitalising their operations, exploiting their full energy efficiency and renewable energy generation potentials, and recovering nutrients and materials from waste water streams and drinking water treatment.

These are the five success factors we must achieve to set the sector on the path to change. They are accompanied by short check-lists for regulators and policy makers.

1. Enabling regulatory framework

2. Ensuring long-term funding and resources

3. Attracting a competent workforce and obtaining societal recognition

4. Developing innovative solutions and increasing motivation to change

5. Avoiding pollution at the source.

Our society, economy, environment and health depend on each of us having access to reliable, clean and affordable water every day. Your European water services strive every day to do this.

Much EU legislation to better protect people and the planet has been passed or is being processed since the last European Parliament elections – the Drinking Water Directive, the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive, and legislation covering agriculture, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. One other cornerstone of water legislation – the Water Framework Directive – will need to define its post 2027 ambitions, and policy makers must decide whether to extend its reach to protect water resources. We support such a move.

We need a robust 360° strategy at European level to ensure that water services are protected across all areas. In our vision for our water’s future, we call on EU to prioritise:

1. Giving water its right place

2. Protecting the quality of our water resources

3. Addressing climate change

4. Enhancing the Circular Economy

5. Financing change while keeping water services affordable

6. Improving security and resilience and guaranteeing the protection of sensitive information.

Read more in our Water Resilience Strategy for Europe; Our vision for our water’s future.

Our world is changing rapidly and so are water services. Innovation is key to guaranteeing the affordability of safe, sustainable and resilient water services for the decades to come. Water service providers are well aware of the challenges and have identified a number of technological and non-technological areas requiring particular innovation efforts with a view to meeting the goals of the European Green Deal. New challenges have also placed a particular focus on the need for innovation across the sector’s supply chain to boost resilience as well as sustainability.

The research needs are compiled in this document and should help policy makers in designing research and innovation programmes in a way that responds to the real needs of drinking water and wastewater operators.

2022 saw a welcome return to a more usual life after the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-21. It was not without its challenges, however. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February set off a chain of reactions that reverberated throughout the year, invoking energy-reduction and energy-efficiency measures to deal with the fallout. Also linked to it were supply chain disruptions, which impacted the delivery of essential chemicals necessary in water treatment processes.

Read about our work on these challenges and other issues affecting the water sector in our annual report for 2022.