Our Publications

As the pressure on water resources continues to grow due to climate change, more attention is being paid to alternative water sources. One viable alternative water source is urban waste water that has undergone necessary treatment to avoid health and environmental risks. To this end, the European Commission presented a regulation to define the minimum requirements Member States have to comply with in order to ensure the safety of water reuse practices across the European Union.

We welcome the legislative proposal which should contribute to increasing confidence in the reuse of treated waste water. However, we see major points to be improved on to make this regulation applicable and effective on the ground.

EurEau supports the proposal of the European Commission to reduce the environmental impact of single-use plastics (SUP). Producers must be held economically responsible for the substantial economic damage wet wipes cause to the waste water infrastructure.

We support the underlining philosophy of the Drinking Water Directive to ensure the protection of public health and we uphold the goals the European Commission intends to achieve with the new proposal. We believe that European citizens’ trust in tap water needs to be further increased.
However various elements of the European Commission’s proposed text will have to be improved by the co-legislators to make the directive legally sound and implementable in an efficient and effective way.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) set out a journey to achieve ‘good status’ for water bodies by 2015. The implementation of the WFD has revealed some issues, especially concerning the way the status of a water body is defined and assessed at Member State level. This position paper aims at describing the shortcomings in the tools for status assessment and the role played by exemptions, with a focus on the implications for water services in Europe. It also suggests possible solutions that could be part of the future revision of the WFD in order to uphold the main goal of the directive: the protection of European water bodies even after 2027.

Customers and citizens need a much greater understanding of the value of water, including water pricing policies and the governance of water services, namely which players are involved, who takes the decisions on how water services are managed and who is responsible for what. Achieving this will help ensure access to safe and sustainable water today and tomorrow.

Clean water is a prerequisite for ensuring environmental and public health and prosperity. To achieve this we need better EU policy coordination.

Decreasing water consumption is an economic challenge for water and waste water operators, since most of their costs are fixed but their income is closely linked to consumption. Given that 60-80% of the costs are fixed, measures should guarantee that all fixed costs are recovered, for example by a better tariff structure.

The Fertiliser Regulation opens the door to using recovered phosphorus from sewage sludge in fertiliser products. Including treated input materials from waste water treatment plants as a component in fertilisers promotes recycling and is better for the environment.

Glyphosate is routinely found in raw water resources across Europe. We support measures taken to control the concentrations of this chemical in surface waters and in urban run-off. It is vital that consumers across Europe have access to safe drinking water. We need access to clean water resources that are free from contaminants such as microplastics and micropollutants. This protects the environment, and consumers from additional costs.

The UN officially acknowledged the human right to water and sanitation. To realise this right, water and sanitation must be available, accessible, affordable, acceptable, and safe. EurEau members provide consumers with water that meet some of the world’s strictest standards, every day. Pricing policies and affordability mechanisms play a fundamental role in this.