Water Quality - EC Bathing Water Directive

Revision of the 1976 Bathing Water Directive

• Why revise the Bathing Water Directive?
• Current situation
• History of the revision

Why revise the Bathing Water Directive?

The existing Bathing Water Directive (76/160/EEC), introduced in 1976, has been responsible for a considerable increase in bathing water quality at designated bathing sites throughout Europe, therefore achieving its primary aim of protecting public health.

However, the Directive is widely considered to be in need of simplification and updating to take into account lessons learnt from its implementation, developments in science and knowledge about the risks of bathing, and the environmental protection offered by more recent EU water legislation, such as the Urban Wastewater Treatment and Water Framework Directives.

The overall objective of the revised Bathing Water Directive remains the protection of public health whilst bathing. It aims to:

• update the way in which water quality is measured, focusing on fewer microbiological indicators, and setting different standards for inland and coastal bathing sites
• reduce the health risks linked to bathing by setting scientifically based minimum water quality standards
• make changes to monitoring and sampling frequency
• allowing a limited number of water samples to be disregarded during short term pollution incidents, if the event is predicted and the public warned beforehand
• provide better information to the public, allowing more informed choices to be made about the risk of bathing
• improve the overall management of bathing water quality by requiring an assessment of potential sources of pollution
• be compatible with other EU water related legislation, in particular the Water Framework Directive

The revision process is carried out under the co-decision procedure, which gives equal weight to the views of the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament in making new legislation. The text of the revised Directive has to be negotiated and agreed between the both Council and Parliament, who each discuss the text and any amendments made to it during a series of readings.

Current situation

The Council of the European Union agreed a draft text for the revised Directive, known as the Common Position, in December 2004. The European Parliament considered the Council document in May 2005 and proposed 26 amendments. The Council was unable to reconcile some of these with its Common Position, particularly over the issues of water quality standards and deadlines for implementation of the revised Directive and rejected them on 6 September 2005.

The Council’s rejection of the European Parliament’s amendments required representatives of both institutions to meet as a single committee to try to resolve the remaining areas of disagreement. This took place on 12 October 2005, under the UK Presidency. It reached agreement successfully on all the remaining differences between the Council and the Parliament, but a full “joint text” of the draft directive that incorporates this agreement is not yet available. In the meantime, a summary of the outcome of the Conciliation Committee is available in the Council’s press release.

The final requirements before the new Directive can be adopted are for the Council and the European Parliament to approve the joint text in separate third reading votes. These are expected to take place before the middle of January and, if successful, the new Directive will enter into force in 2006.

For further background information about the revision procedure and content of the proposals to date, visit the History of the revision page.

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