Brussels, 13/10/2005 (Agence Europe) - The first conciliation meeting on the new proposed directive on the quality of bathing water was a successful one on Tuesday in Brussels. In no time at all, the Parliament and the Council arrived at an agreement on a text which is supposed to update a directive which is almost thirty years old, reduce risks for bathers by concentrating on the two most relevant criteria (intestinal enterococci and Escherischia coli), and modernise the management of bathing water in the EU while facilitating matters for the Member States which have the greatest difficulty implementing the current legislation (directive 76/160/EEC). At the end of the preparatory negotiations there were still differences of opinion, particularly on the standards to be applied to a new water quality status - “sufficient quality”- which will be added to the statuses “excellent quality” and “good quality” in the classification of water (EUROPE 9039). On this point, the conciliation enabled reference values to be reached which are stricter than those proposed by the Council for both inland waters and costal waters, in order to achieve an estimated decrease in health risk to bathers of around 8 to12%. The parameters for intestinal enterococci will be 330 for inland waters and 185 for costal waters, measured to the 90th percentile. The values for the bacteria Escherichia coli were not changed. MEPs having been satisfied on the strengthening of standards were able to abandon their demand to limit the status of “satisfactory quality” to a transitional period of eight years without difficulty. The date on which the European Commission should submit a review report to the Parliament was brought forward to 2008 (instead of 2018), and this report should continue analysis on viruses. On this basis, the Commission will be due to revise the directive by 2020 at the latest. The criterion of “sufficient quality” for water is therefore likely to disappear. On information for the public, the Parliament achieved a commitment from the Member States to provide permanent information to bathers (new signs should appear in all bathing areas, the results of regular analyses will be easily accessible, particularly on the internet, so that real-time information is available).
Antonio Trakatellis (PPE-DE, Greece), who led the Parliamentary delegation in the conciliation, Jules Maaten (ALDE, Netherlands), the rapporteur, and Caroline Jackson (PPE-DE, UK), the nominal rapporteur, welcomed the result which crowned with success “a long struggle” and “will significantly improve the standard of bathing water in Europe over the coming years”. In a press release, Stavros Dimas, the Environment Commissioner, notes that the new directive will “tighten the health standards for bathing water - and simplify them. It will improve the management of bathing sites and the provision of public information about them; and streamline water quality monitoring programmes”.