Water supply and sanitation (WSS) is the responsibility of each member state of the European Union (EU), but in the 21st century union-wide policies have come into effect. Water resources are limited and supply and sanitation systems are under pressure from urbanisation and climate change. Indeed, the stakes are high as the European Environmental Agency found that one European out of ten already suffers a situation of water scarcity and the IEA measured the energy consumption of the water sector to be equivalent to 3,5% of the electricity consumption of the EU.

Directives

The water policy of the EU is primarily codified in the following directives:

The Bathing Waters Directive (76/160/EEC) of 1976 replaced by the Directive 2006/7/EC; The Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (91/271/EEC) of 21 May 1991 concerning discharges of municipal and some industrial waste waters; The Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) of 23 October 2000 concerning water resources management; The Drinking Water Directive (2020/2184) of 16 December 2020 concerning the quality of water intended for human consumption (codifying 98/83/EC amendments).

EU member states have enacted national legislation in accordance with these directives. The institutional organisation of public water supply and sanitation does not fall under the purview of the EU, but remains a prerogative of each member state.

Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive of 1991

The Council Directive on Urban Waste Water Treatment concerns the collection, treatment and discharge of urban waste water and the treatment and discharge of waste water from certain industrial sectors. Its aim is to protect the environment from any adverse effects due to discharge of such waters.

According to the directive's timetable:

by 31 December 1998: all agglomerations of more than 10 000 population equivalents (PE) which discharge water into sensitive areas had to have a proper collection and treatment system requiring meeting the most stringent quality standards, usually referred to as tertiary treatment (Art. 5); by 31 December 2000: agglomerations of more than 15 000 p.e. outside sensitive areas had to have a collection and treatment system which enables them to satisfy less stringent requirements, usually referred to as secondary treatment (Art. 4); by 31 December 2005: all agglomerations of between 2 000 and 10 000 PE. which discharge water into sensitive areas, and all agglomerations of between 2 000 and 15 000 p.e. which do not discharge into such areas had to have a collection and treatment system (Art. 3).

However, in the case of Spain changes were made at the time of transposing the Directive. In Article 2 of the Directive, a collecting system means "a system of conduits which collects and conducts urban waste water" and therefore all sewers and drains, both public and private were included. However, in the Spanish transposition (Real Decreto-Ley 11/1995 of 28 December 1995), the definition of a collecting system was changed to mean "all systems of conduits which collect and conduct urban waste water, from the municipal sewer and drainage networks and go to the treatment plants". The added words mean that when the Spanish definition is applied to Article 3 of the Directive the municipal sewer and drainage networks are excluded. If the municipal network did not exist, as in the case of many urbanisations (housing estates) developed in the 1960s and 1970s and within agglomerations of over 2000 p.e. no collecting system needed to be provided at all, under the Real Decreto-Ley 11/1995. Obviously if waste water is not collected it cannot be treated, therefore the changed definition also affected Article 4 of the Directive. Even so, Spain had to and still has to comply fully with the Directive. On 5 March 2009, the Catalan Autonomous Government finally approved a law (La Llei de la millora d’urbanizacions) to deal with deficits of infrastructures, such as sewers in urbanisations in Catalonia, 18 years after the Directive was approved by the European Parliament.

The directive also allows the establishment of less sensitive coastal areas, for which primary treatment would be sufficient, if it can be shown that there is no adverse impact on the environment (Art. 6).

Member states had to establish lists of sensitive areas. It has been estimated that in 2004 about 34 percent of the pollutant load from wastewater that falls under the scope of the directive is discharged into sensitive areas.

This Directive was amended by the Commission Directive 98/15/EC.

Implementation challenges Commission Decision 93/481/EEC defines the information that Member States should provide the commission on the state of implementation of the Directive.

The European Commission published three reports on the implementation of the directive, the latest in 2004. The report noted that the wastewater treatment situation in Europe is still very unsatisfactory and that none of the deadlines has been met by all member countries. Only Austria, Denmark and Germany fully complied with the directive. The report noted that BOD levels in European rivers have been reduced by 20–30 percent since the enactment of the directive, but that other pollution parameters such as nitrogen levels remained high. The reason is that much of the nitrogen pollution comes from non-point sources in agriculture, and the still insufficient nutrient removal by wastewater treatment plants. The eutrophication of the Baltic Sea, North Sea and considerable parts of the Mediterranean thus remains a "severe problem". The report also noted that it is estimated that more than 50 percent of the discharges into sensitive areas was not treated sufficiently. Even for non-sensitive areas, although the picture was less bleak, only 69% of the discharge received treatment and the 2000 deadline was not met by most member countries. 25 out of 556 cities in the EU still had no wastewater treatment system at all.

The directive triggered substantial investment in sewage treatment throughout the EU. A controversial aspect of the directive is the requirement for all agglomerations with more than 2,000 inhabitants to have a wastewater collection system, which has been widely interpreted as requiring connection to a sewer system even if existing on-site sanitation systems perform adequately. The cost of connecting houses to sewers in small rural towns with dispersed housing patterns is often very high and imposes a high financial burden on users.

According to the European Commission, the directive represents the most cost intensive European legislation in the environmental sector. The EU estimates that the equivalent of €152 billion were invested in wastewater treatment from 1990 to 2010.European Commission 2004, op. cit., p. 108 The EU provides support for the implementation of the directive in the order of 5 billion Euro per year.

Planned revision

The European Commission is currently undergoing a consultation on the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive. As the directive was adopted in 1991, its challenge will be to integrate the commitments taken with the Paris agreement as the wastewater treatment sector consumes 1% of the global total energy consumption. Under a business as usual scenario, this figure is expected to increase by 60% by 2040 compared to 2014. With the introduction of energy efficiency requirements, the energy consumption of the wastewater treatment sector can be reduced by 50% only by using current technologies. On top of that, there are also opportunities to produce enough energy from wastewater to turn the whole water sector energy neutral. It uses the energy embedded in the sludge by producing biogas through anaerobic digestion. These features have been mainly overlooked due to the over-riding objective for utilities to meet existing and future needs for wastewater treatment. In the European Union, 0.8% of total energy consumption goes to wastewater treatment facilities.

Drinking water directive of 1998

Content The Directive is intended to protect human health by laying down healthiness and purity requirements which must be met by drinking water within the Community (see water quality). It applies to all water intended for human consumption apart from natural mineral waters and waters which are medicinal products.

Member States shall ensure that such drinking water:

does not contain any concentration of micro-organisms, parasites or any other substance which constitutes a potential human health risk; meets the minimum requirements (microbiological and chemical parameters and those relating to radioactivity) laid down by the directive. They will take any other action needed to guarantee the healthiness and purity of water intended for human consumption.

In setting contaminant levels the directive applies the precautionary principle. For example, the EU contaminant levels for pesticides are up to 20 times lower than those in the WHO drinking water guidelines,World Health Organization:Guidelines for drinking-water quality, third edition, incorporating first and second addenda, accessed on 6 May 2010 because the EU directive not only aims at protecting human health but also the environment. The WHO contaminant levels themselves are already set so that there would be no potential risk if the contaminant was absorbed continuously over a person's lifetime. Centre d'Information sur l'Eau:Les normes de qualité de l'eau potable sont très rigoureuses, accessed on 6 May 2010 EU drinking water standards and cases where these standards are temporarily exceeded by a small margin should be interpreted in this context.

Compared to the previous European drinking water directive of 1980 the number of parameters has been reduced, allowing member to add parameters such as magnesium, total hardness, phenols, zinc, phosphate, calcium and chlorite."Europe paves the way for revision of the Drinking Water Directive", Water 21, Journal of the International Water Association, August 2006, p. 18

The directive requires member states to regularly monitor the quality of water intended for human consumption by using the methods of analysis specified in the directive, or equivalent methods. Member states also have to publish drinking water quality reports every three years, and the European Commission is to publish a summary report. Within five years Member States had to comply with the Directive. Exemptions can be granted on a temporary basis, provided that they do not affect human health.

Implementation challenges and planned revision

Until 2006 the European Commission has not published a summary report on drinking water quality. No EU country achieves full compliance with the directive, mainly because of the geological nature of its soil and agricultural activity. in 2003 the European Commission initiated a broad consultation process to prepare a revision of the Directive. One key aspect of the revision would be to move away from a pure end-of-pipe standard setting approach. Instead the whole water supply process from the basin to the tap would be assessed to identify risk and the most effective control points, through so-called Water safety plans."The pivotal role of water safety plans", Water 21, Journal of the International Water Association, August 2006, p. 21-22 Another important challenge will be to integrate the new environmental, climate and energy goals of the EU. The issue is substantial as in average 23% of the treated water in the EU is leaked, with some countries facing leakage rates as high as 60%.

Water Framework Directive of 2000

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