The Members of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee voted late in the afternoon of Monday 30 November on radical measures to remedy the serious shortcomings in the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), highlighted in December 2019 by the European Commission in the fitness check of the Directive (see EUROPE 12552/8, 12389/14).
The results of their vote will not be known until Tuesday, but there is broad agreement between political groups, given the compromise amendments calling for faster and better implementation.
MEPs will stress that no revision of the WFD is necessary and will call on the Commission to state that the WFD will not be revised, but that the institution will continue to propose updates to the annexes, if necessary.
The draft resolution will stress the need to restore and improve water quality and will underline that, in order to improve the condition of bodies of water, it is essential that all levels of government and authorities in Member States be involved.
MEPs should deeply regret that half of the EU’s bodies of water have still not obtained good status and that the WFD objectives have not yet been met. They will recall that Member States are obliged to implement the measures required to avoid deterioration in the condition of bodies of water.
They will call on Member States to take the necessary measures urgently to ensure full implementation and enforcement of the Directive, in particular through the third River Basin Management Plan to be adopted by 2021.
The text should call for better integration of the objectives of the Directive into all sectoral policies and for additional measures in areas such as adaptation to climate change, biodiversity, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), chemicals and pollutants of concern, water pricing policies, hydropower and urban waste water treatment. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)