1.3  Structure of report

1.3       Structure of report

Section 2 recaps the key findings of the 2018 EEA assessment of status and pressures of European waters. The results of the 2018 assessment have been updated to include reporting information from more countries (28 Member States plus Norway) compared to those assessed in 2018. Section 2 thus presents an updated summary of the information published by the EEA in 2018 (which was based on 25 Member States).

Section 3 presents ten European significant water management issues (SWMIs) giving an overview of each issue in Europe, the main impacts on water ecosystems and key measures available to tackle the issue. Section 2 also briefly explains how the European SWMIs have been determined and the information used to describe them (based on the second RBMPs and other sources of information on sectors, activities, and impacts).

In section 4, the report discusses certain cross-cutting challenges of EU-wide relevance to measures implementation for addressing European significant water management issues. These cross-cutting challenges address:

1. the coordination of EU policies and strategies in terms of their management responses to reduce pressures in the water environment,
2. the integration of water policy objectives into sectoral strategies,
3. the optimisation of the funding of measures and
4. the role of multi-benefit measures.