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As water is a cross-cutting focus across natural environment, socio-economic development and public health and wellbeing concerns, water resources management can’t be undertaken in isolation. Implementing appropriate measures, either to ensure the sustainability of water resources and water dependent ecosystems or to secure the water supplies which society and the economy depend on, water management requires the involvement of numerous stakeholders. As underlined by the OECD (OECD and UNECE, 2014), sectoral competition for water in Eastern Partnership countries is already intensifying as water demands grow over time. These trends require urgent actions to be taken in various domains of water resources management, including changes in legal framework, better integration of institutions, introduction of strategic planning, increased financing, and development of human resources. The importance of using available data and information to support knowledge-based policy making should be underlined. A key process is sharing available data and information among national water agencies, as well as with external stakeholders, along with integrating all data relevant to water resources management. This will help provide a robust baseline for developing water-focused environmental policies, not only at the national level, but also at the regional level – an essential process in improving cooperation among the transboundary river basins.

The experiences already available from the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), as well as data harmonisation and sharing under the EIONET voluntary dataflow, will bring tremendous inputs into the national and regional processes of data exchange in the Eastern Partnership countries.