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BPA mainly enters the body through food, but its presence in drinking water also needs attention. While the EU ban on BPA in food contact materials is a positive step, it should be followed by a full REACH restriction, targeting BPA analogues and promoting safer alternatives. Since BPA transfers to water at higher temperatures, it should be banned from hot-water systems. The revision of BPA limits in the Drinking Water Directive should include a realistic timeline for suppliers to comply with new standards.

TFA is a very persistent, very mobile member of the PFAS group of chemicals. Due to its numerous emissions pathways, TFA is now ubiquitous in the water cycle and hard to remove by conventional water treatments. The EU should recognise the urgent necessity to stop TFA emissions to the environment as a first step towards addressing this pollution.

Because TFA is an atypical PFAS, the catch-all “PFAS Total” parameter is inadequate for TFA. A specific TFA limit value in drinking water should be set based on health-derived criteria. Where this value would require additional drinking water treatment, these costs should be borne by the polluters.

Safe and secure water supplies are of critical importance for all people everywhere, to protect public health, mainstream resilience, and guarantee safety and the well-being of people and societies.

The promised European Water Resilience Strategy should set a clear direction for coordinated and coherent action by Member States, taking into account national and regional circumstances. In this regard, EurEau has identified three essential drivers that we believe should be included in the Water Resilience Strategy to ensure its effectiveness:

• Improved water governance and monitoring for integrated and sustainable water resource management across all sectors.
• Improved supply management to ensure sufficient resources.
• Better demand management and promotion of water saving solutions where appropriate.

EurEau welcomes and strongly supports the European Commission’s Proposal for a Regulation on preventing plastic pellet losses to reduce microplastic pollution, which will allow for a regulatory framework implementing control at source for a relevant part of microplastics unintentionally released to the environment, and it will contribute not only to protecting water resources but also to meeting the objectives of the European Green Deal, the Zero Pollution Action Plan, as well as the New Action Plan on The Circular Economy.

EurEau welcomes and strongly supports the European Commission’s Proposal to amend the Mercury Regulation, banning the use, manufacture and export on dental amalgam from 2025, which will not only contribute to a long-term reduction of mercury in water bodies but also to the circular economy by allowing for a decrease of mercury in treated urban wastewater for reuse in agricultural irrigation and in sludge from wastewater treatment.

While EurEau welcomes the Commission’s action to address the condition of soils, we regret the lower ambition shown by the proposed Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience compared to the abandoned project of a Soil Health Law. The monitoring rules laid down in the proposal are necessary but not sufficient. They should be accompanied by binding rules to protect and regenerate healthy soils. The Directive should incorporate stronger links with surface- and groundwater quality, as well as Circular Economy goals. Strong action for healthy soils is paramount for both drinking- and wastewater operators.

EurEau supports the Drinking Water Directive’s (DWD) goal of reducing water leakage, but emphasises the need for reliable data to underpin this effort. As the first step towards leakage reduction plans will involve calculating a Union average leakage rate, Member States must include the same index in their reporting. This index should be based on volumetric units so that all drinking water operators can easily implement it within the DWD timeframe.

The revision of this Regulation offers the possibility to adjust the requirements for detergents. In the view of drinking water and wastewater operators, the Commission’s proposal clearly lacks ambition and major environmental impacts are not sufficiently addressed.

The new Regulation should respond to the EU’s Zero Pollution ambition by strengthening the biodegradability requirements for all ingredients, including surfactants, avoiding the risk of microplastics generation, ensuring the safe use of microorganisms and reducing the release of phosphorous into the sewer network while strengthening phosphorous recycling.

EurEau supports the Commission’s approach to promoting environmental protection coupled with access to medicines. While the proposal offers long-overdue advances in controlling pollution from pharmaceuticals at the source, it must go further in curbing excessive use of over-the-counter medicines, take into account risks posed by metabolites and transformation products, and provide further transparency for environmental risk assessments.

On 23 February 2023, the European Commission presented its proposal for a Regulation for measures to reduce the cost of deploying gigabit electronic communications networks (gigabit infrastructure act, GIA). This proposal aims at facilitating the deployment of broadband infrastructure in line with the 2030 digital compass and the digital decade policy programme.

The expansion of high-performance networks for electronic communication is very important for the water sector. EurEau welcomes that drinking water infrastructure is exempt from the scope of the Regulation. The EU institutions should also take into account the special status of critical infrastructures when it comes to access to physical infrastructures and related data.