Brussels, 02/06/2008 (Agence Europe) - Despite a slight downward trend for coastal bathing areas, the EU can still boast a high bathing water quality, which can, nevertheless, be improved if member states are aiming for the excellence demanded of them in Community legislation, mandatory values but non-binding guide values.
The most recent report bolstered by information from member states on the 2007 bathing season reveals that for coastal bathing areas the proportion of sites complying with the mandatory standards decreased by nearly a percent to 95.2%. The number of coastal sites meeting the directive's more stringent but non-binding guide values decreased from 88.4% in 2006 to 86.1%, the second such decrease in as many years. The results for freshwater bathing sites remained stable. For the mandatory standards the compliance rate in 2007 was 88.7% compared to 88.8% in 2006. Compliance with the guide values decreased slightly from 63.9% in 2006 to 62.7% in 2007.
This report is based on a 2007 report where a total of 21,368 bathing areas were monitored, a slight increase from the previous year. Some 14,551 of these were in coastal waters and 6,797 in inland freshwater areas.
Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas gave an overall welcome to the result when he presented them to the press on Monday 2 June, in time for the summer break. According to Dimas, some of the best news is the 44% decrease in sites being de-listed is encouraging (only 143), a practice that member states unduly resort to avoid having to the clean up dirty bathing areas. The Commissioner believes that the infringement procedures against 11 Member States over de-listing have borne fruit and announced that some of the cases had been abandoned. Mr Dimas said that the slight downward trend can be observed for coastal bathing areas but he said that if Member States continued to work towards full compliance of all bathing sites, this could be improved. he congratulated Luxembourg for having measured the quality of its water with standards in the revised directive adopted in 2006, without waiting to 2015, the cut-off date for full transpositions into domestic law of member states. He said that he hoped others would follow this example.
The Water Information System for Europe is available at:
http: //water.europa.eu/bathingwater. (A.N.)