Post a comment on the text below

Where many environmental problems which require concerted action (because of their global or cross-border nature, or because they can be handled more efficiently and transparently on EU level) benefit from EU policies, there’s a gap to bridge in cross-boundary goal settings for specific issues (IEEP 2013), including flood risk management and in the implementation of the existing policies (EC 2012c). As chapter 4 further clarifies synergies between water (WFD, floods directive) and nature legislation (BHDs) is underexploited, a conclusion that can be repeated for synergies between water legislation and thematic policies like the rural development regulation (EU 2013b) of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Policies and their implementation are complemented by practices. For several EU countries, the floods directive as such did not radically change all existing practices of which some already exist for decades or even ages. Other practices get renewed or new attention. A flood risk management approach focussing on reducing fatalities and affected people is an example of the previous one, where mapping the environmental vulnerability is (at country level) new for most countries. The same is true for natural water retention measures or measures working with natural processes (EC 2014a): some measures will sound very familiar to flood managers while others will be new in some regions of Europe or are used but without fully exploiting the synergies with water and nature goals.