EurEau News

EurEau position: Pharmaceutical Legislative Package

EurEau supports the Commission’s approach to promoting environmental protection coupled with access to medicines. While the proposal offers long-overdue advances in controlling pollution from pharmaceuticals at the source, it must go further in curbing excessive use of over-the-counter medicines, take into account risks posed by metabolites and transformation products, and provide further transparency for environmental risk assessments.

The first set of amendments from the Rapporteurs in the European Parliament’s ENVI is expected on 28 September.

Read our position here. 

Detergents Regulation: must be in line with the EU’s Zero Pollution Ambition

The Commission’s proposal for the revision of the Detergents Regulation lacks ambition and ignores the great strides made in technical progress in the almost 20 years since the original Regulation. If this Regulation truly wants to be future-proof, it should lift the overall ambition levels at least to those already set out in the Ecolabel criteria that have proved feasible and successful in the market.

Read more about our position here. 

Tervetuloa Brysseliin: EurEau secondment

From Monday 2 October, the EurEau secretariat will welcome EU2 co-chairperson, Paula Lindell, to our offices for a month-long secondment.

Paula will use the opportunity to work on the UWWTD and meet with policymakers here.

Tervetuloa Bryssel Paulaan ja toivomme, että viihdyt täällä kannattavasti.

Speaking out

Claudia Castell-Exner DVGW spoke for us at ‘Statusseminar’, a research project on water extreme events funded by the German research ministry on 20-21 September 2023.

Gari Villa-Landa, EurEau Senior Policy Officer, participated in the panel discussion ‘Towards a more water resilient European Union’ CIS COM ATG Water and Scarcity meeting on 26-27 September 2023 in Spain.

Oliver Loebel, EurEau Secretary General, will join the panel as part of the Politico discussion on water scarcity on 10 October 2023. You can register to attend here.

EU news

Water legislation

UWWTD: ENVI vote declines full benefit of EPR

The European Parliament’s Environment (ENVI) Committee voted (20.09.23) on amendments to the revision of the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (UWWTD). The recast should allow water operators across Europe to tackle remaining pollution sources, to better align with the Sustainable Development Goals and the European Green Deal, enhance the governance of the wastewater sector and facilitate access to sanitation. The vote in the plenary is set for 5 October.

Read our reaction to the ENVI vote here and the ENVI press release here.

Water and agriculture

Sustainable Use of Pesticides: Co-legislators far from break-through

Discussions in the Council and Parliament on the Sustainable Use of Plant Protection Products Regulation have not significantly progressed over the summer. Both institutions are likely to substantially weaken the proposed provisions on sensitive areas, thus lowering the protection of drinking water resources.

The Parliament’s Environment committee currently plans to adopt its report at the end of October while the plenary meeting is scheduled for the end of November. Council hopes to adopt a common approach before the end of the year.

Pesticides: EFSA/ECHA Guidance on drinking water disinfection by-products

The European Food Safety Authority has published its 'Guidance document (here) on the impact of water treatment processes on residues of active substances or their metabolites in water abstracted for the production of drinking water'.

EurEau welcomes this publication which is the result of years of efforts. The guidance proposes a decision tree to avoid that drinking water treatment processes lead to the creation of hazardous compounds from pesticides and biocides and their metabolites.

Soil Monitoring Law: Rapporteur appointed

Martin Hojsík (Renew, SK) has been designated as Rapporteur for the Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive (aka, the Soil Monitoring Law) proposed by the Commission in July. During an initial exchange of views in the Parliament’s ENVI Committee, which leads the file, Hojsík said he would refer to the text as a “Soil Health Law” to emphasise the need for more ambition.

Nutrients: EurEau signs joint letter urging Commission to publish INMAP

EurEau has endorsed an open letter sent by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) to the European Commission Executive Vice-President for the European Green Deal, Maroš Šefčovič (12 September), calling on the Commission to publish its Integrated Nutrient Management Action Plan (INMAP). More …

Water and the environment

Environmental Quality Standards: Parliament backs Polluter Pays Principle but endangers aquifer recharge

The European Parliament adopted its position on a new law amending environmental quality standards (EQS) for surface water and groundwater, with amendments that strengthen the Polluter Pays and Control at Source Principles through an explicit hierarchy of measures. MEPs also chose to increase transparency for water services and citizens by making pollutant inventories public for each river basin. More

Mercury Regulation: draft published

The Commission has published the draft revised Regulation 2017/852 on Mercury.

Despite the delay, EurEau welcomes the proposal to end the use of dental amalgam in January 2025. This ban is urgent as dental amalgam is the most important mercury source in our surface waters.

Read more here.

REACH: Commission publishes amendment to Annex 17

The Commission has published the amending Annex XVII to REACH as regards synthetic polymer microparticles. You can find it here.

PFAS: First ECHA consultation on the restriction of “forever chemicals’

The first ECHA consultation on the universal PFAS restriction proposal closed on 25 September 2023 with more than 5,600 submissions received.

In its reaction, EurEau demonstrated the impacts of PFAS contamination on water operators in terms of resource and water use, energy consumption, circular economy and costs. Only a full and prompt ban can prevent even more serious problems in the future.

All submissions will be here.

Water as an essential service

Concessions Directive: Water exclusion assessed

With considerable delay, the Commission published its evaluation report of the Concessions Directive (Directive 2014/23/EU), including a chapter on the exclusion of the water sector from its scope. Regarding the exclusion of the water sector, the report states that 'the limited data from a handful of Member States does not allow for drawing firm conclusions on the impact of the Directive on the broader water sector.'

The report, accompanied by a Staff Working Document, is available here.

No follow-up measures are announced.

Polluter Pays Principle: Commission kicks off work on Recommendation

The Commission has conducted a public consultation on the application of this principle to EU and national environmental law. This initiative will result in Commission recommendations, possibly in 2024.

EurEau supports this initiative. The application of the Polluter Pays Principle is enshrined in the EU Treaty and should therefore be consistently applied in all EU law. However, as the EU Court of Auditors wrote in their report 12/2021, the application remains patchy and insufficient, in particular for diffuse pollution.

Our input to the consultation is here.

Innovation Sharing Platform news

We hosted a webinar on GHG accounting in early September. You can follow the online chat here.

We also held a webinar on recruitment to the water sector. You can join the chat here.

Meanwhile, on the Platform, our colleagues are looking for feedback on the Anaerobic Co-digestion of Organic Waste and Sewage sludge. To read more and contribute to the debate, click here.

Other news

Blue Deal for Water in the EU

23 MEPS and one member of the EESC have written an open letter to European Heads of State, calling for a Vice President of Water to oversee the challenges we face. According to them ‘this strategy will be crucial to protect valuable resources for present and future generations, the environment and industries’. The letter is not publicly available yet but you can read more here.

EurEau supports this call too and we will be underlying this and the need for a European Water Strategy in our forthcoming vision paper for the 2024-2030 period.

Sentinal system: survey open

The EU Sewage Sentinel System for SARS-CoV-2 website launched in 2021 to track the COVID-19 virus in sewage will be re-designed to evolve into a true EU Wastewater Observatory for Public Health.

The JRC is looking for feedback and suggestions on how best to meet your needs. You can access the survey here. The survey will close on the 3rd of October at noon.

In related news, the first results of the feedback will be shared at the forthcoming International Conference “Towards a Global Wastewater Surveillance System for Public Health”, Frankfurt a.M., Germany, 15-17 November 2023, which also hosts the 10th Edition of the EU Town Hall.

Events

16-19 October 2023 - Europe-INBO International Conference in Valencia, Spain. More information here.

14-16 November 2023 - 2023 IWA Digital Water Summit, Bilbao, Spain. AEAS is co-organising the 2023 IWA Digital Water Summit. More…

23-25 October 2023 - Critical Infrastructure of Cities CIC 2023 in Nowy Sącz, Poland; this conference takes into account current issues of security of the broadly understood critical infrastructure, environmental protection and health of residents and regarding smart cities.

27-30 November 2023 - ENEG - National Meeting of Water and Sanitation Management Entities, Porto, Portugal. More …

14-17 April 2024 – IWA Water Loss, San Sebastian, Spain. Many of the world’s leading experts in the field of Non-Revenue Water Management will be present and will discuss the latest developments, strategies, techniques and applications of international best practices as well as successful case studies.