Water Policy

Abstract

Water policy is one of the oldest and most heavily regulated issue areas in EU (European Union) environmental policy, with a history of legislative activity dating back to the early 1970s. Yet, as this chapter will seek to demonstrate, despite over 25 years of environmental policy activity, the effectiveness of existing measures to control and safeguard aquatic resources in the EU remains open to question. In part, this is because much of the early legislation relating to water policy is out of date and fails to take into account the huge improvements that have been made over the past decades in terms of techniques to control pollution and manage water as a sustainable resource. Doubts have also been raised about the effectiveness of water policy measures in the face of evidence from the European Environment Agency that the quality of water in a large proportion of the EU’s rivers and lakes remains below the minimum standards set out in legislation. In the face of growing evidence of regulatory failure and lack of policy effectiveness, in the late 1990s water policy has undergone a process of revision and re-regulation in the EU. This chapter reviews the key developments in the history of water policy in the EU, seeks out evidence of effectiveness (or lack of effectiveness) in environmental policy terms, and assesses the likely impact of recent attempts to re-regulate this area of EU environmental policy.