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Box 16: Cross border cooperation on the River Kolpa (Slovenia and Croatia)

The River Kolpa runs on the border along Slovenia and Croatia for 100 km of its course. There are nine bathing waters identified on the Slovenian side of the Kolpa – six are of excellent water quality and three of good quality. The Slovenian and Croatian water authorities successfully cooperate in the management of the river and its catchment area according to the principles of the Water Framework and Floods Directives. The work is coordinated through a bilateral commission. For example, in 2000, a Kolpa water management plan was prepared. Six years ago, a Slovenian–Croatian cross border project (Frisco1) started to reduce flood risk with non–structural measures. Both countries are also cooperating in the management of pollution sources and heavy rain runoff to support good ecological status and prevent future deterioration of bathing water quality.  

In addition to catchment–based approaches, good practices of bathing water quality supervision (including monitoring) and measure-taking are already shared and discussed between EU Member States, within an expert framework set by the BWD. For example, the EU SWIM project, launched during the bathing season of 2019, has facilitated cross border benefits, as both schools (in Ireland and the UK, respectively) participating in weather data collecting programme can link their results, sharing knowledge on interconnected environmental factors that affect bathing water quality, and reaching as far as developing bathing water quality prediction models(EPA Catchment Unit, 2019). Nevertheless, good practices of management for critical bathing waters with long-term low bathing water quality should be shared and discussed further. There is still space to improve a number of ‘poor’ quality bathing waters throughout European Member States, mostly in inland areas. In the future, common pollution prediction models and wider early-warning systems can be developed, as they are based on mathematical models and be relatively easily expanded to different environments, provided that the experts from these cooperate in a common effort.