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In general, the crop patterns in southern Europe include many crops with high water requirements (e.g. cotton, alfalfa, maize, fruit trees, vegetables) (Eurostat, 2019a; EEA, 2019k), which are cultivated there for various reasons, including favourable climatic and soil conditions, longstanding tradition and know-how (e.g. special equipment and trained professionals), current level of revenues (especially from fairly commercial/tradeable crops) and significant levels of self-consumption by households. Because of the low water availability and semi-arid conditions in many parts of southern Europe, the water demand of these crops is largely covered by irrigation. The irrigation abstraction per hectare exceeds 5,000 m³ in most southern countries, as well as in Bulgaria. Values higher than 1000 m³ are also observed in countries like Romania, Denmark and France (Figure 4.8).