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Surface water and groundwater bodies

In the context of the WFD, the 'water environment' includes rivers, lakes, transitional waters, groundwater and coastal waters out to one nautical mile (12 nautical miles for chemical status (i.e. territorial waters). These waters are divided into units called water bodies.

The EU Member States now have reported 13 400 groundwater bodies and 111 000 surface water bodies: 80 % of them are rivers, 16 % lakes and 4 % coastal and transitional waters (Table 1.1). All Member States have reported river and groundwater bodies. 23 Member States (all reporting Member States except Luxemburg and Slovakia) have reported lake water bodies, 14 Member States have reported transitional water bodies and 20 reported coastal water bodies. In the second RBMPs seven Member States have delineated 46 territorial waters i.e. water bodies from 1-12 nautical mile.

Table 1.1: Number of Member States, RBDs, water bodies, and length or area, per water category

Source: Extract from WISE SoW database, 25 Member States (EU28 excluding Greece, Ireland and Lithuania).

The number of water bodies varies considerably between Member States due to the size of their territory but also due to their approach to delineate water bodies. Sweden has by far the largest number of surface water bodies, followed by France, Germany, United Kingdom and Italy. Sweden