Guidance to the reader

Dear colleagues,

We invite you to participate in the EIONET and stakeholder consultation of the draft EEA report “European Significant Water Management Issues”.

You can find the draft report here:

https://forum.eionet.europa.eu/nrc-eionet-freshwater/library/2020-european-significant-water-management-issues/european-swmis

In the same folder an online form for the delivery of the comments (EEAs Talk-Back tool) will be available. The online form will allow provide comments on chapters and sections of the report. EEA ask EU Member States to provide a consolidated country response and only upload one set of comments per Member State or EEA member country. EEA´s primary networks are the Eionet NRCs on water (water quality, water emissions and water quantity) and we ask that these, together with the Member State SCG members, coordinate their comments.

Providing comments require an Eionet account. In case you have forgotten your EIONET Account credentials, you can recover them usingthis form: http://www.eionet.europa.eu/password-reset For technical support, please contact EIONET helpdesk at: helpdesk@eionet.europa.eu

We kindly ask all invited stakeholders to comment on the draft report using the online tool before

18 October 2020.

Below you will find some background information on the European Significant Water Management Issues report.

The report is based on EEA assessment of the Water Framework Directive second River Basin Management Plans (“European waters – assessment of status and pressures 2018 (EEA, 2018)[1]),  and takes this one step further and aims at giving a European overview of the main pressures and drivers, by illustrating a selection of Significant Water Management Issues (SWMIs) at European level.

Ten European significant water management issues have been selected for presentation in this report, which are categorised as follows:

• Pollution issues – includes 1) point source pollution, 2) diffuse source pollution including scattered dwellings and pollution from 3) mining,
• Hydromorphological pressures – includes issues related to 4) barriers, 5) loss of lateral connectivity, 6) pressures from hydropower and 7) pressures from inland navigation,
• 8) Abstractions and water scarcity,
• 9) Aquaculture, and
• 10) Invasive alien species.

Further, the report discusses cross-cutting challenges of EU-wide relevance to measures implementation for addressing European SWMIs. These cross-cutting challenges are discussed with emphasis on their role in improving and accelerating the implementation of measures to achieve WFD objectives.

The plan is to revise the draft report based on comments provided and publish the final report in the first half of 2021.

We hope you find the draft report interesting and look forward to receiving your comments.

Thank you very much in advance for your cooperation.

With kind regards,

Peter Kristensen

Project Manager Integrated Water Assessments

European Environment Agency

Overview of contacts as water national reference centres:

NRC water quality: http://www.eionet.europa.eu/ldap-roles/?role_id=eionet-nrc-waterquality

NRC water emissions: http://www.eionet.europa.eu/ldap-roles/?role_id=eionet-nrc-wateremissions

NRC water quantity: http://www.eionet.europa.eu/ldap-roles/?role_id=eionet-nrc-waterquantity

[1] https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/state-of-water