EurEau newsletter - edition 2 - March 2016

Circular Economy
On 4 March, the European Council commented the Action Plan on the Circular Economy. Like EurEau, a lot of countries called for incentives to support secondary raw materials, supporting the market on recovered phosphorus. Cyprus also strongly supported the initiatives related to water reuse, in which EurEau is very active. The Council conclusions will be adopted on June 20.

The Fertiliser Regulation proposal was published by the European Commission on 17 March. You can find the text here. The proposal is opening the door for using secondary raw materials like phosphorus recovered from sewage sludge and sewage sludge ashes. The legislative process in the European Parliament will be led by the ENVI committee.
 

Drinking Water Directive 
We are organising the second symposium on materials and products in contact with drinking water on 12 May. The programme is available here. 
 

Transparency, benchmarking and affordability
Benchmarking and Affordability were discussed in Tirana, where EurEau was invited to attend the workshop organised by the Water Regulators (WAREG) together with Aqua Publica Europea and IWA. Read Carla’s blog post to know more.     
 

Economic benefits of water
EurEau answered the public consultation on Economic benefits of EU water policy and costs of non-implementation - Collection of existing knowledge on 11 March. Read our contribution here.
 

Water and Agriculture
EurEau started gathering information on the costs borne by water operators and that are associated with agricultural pressures.
 

Micropollutants
EurEau answered the public consultation on CMR in textiles on 21 March.
 

Ad-hoc Task Force Group on Water Reuse 
We attended the ad-hoc Task Force Group on Water reuse meeting in Malta on 17-18 March. The group is drafting a proposal for EU guidelines about water reuse in irrigation and groundwater recharge, with the aim to promote water reuse. A final draft of the guidelines should be ready by mid-June.

At the same time, the European Commission’s DG ENVI mandated the Joint Research Centre to develop a technical proposal about minimum quality requirements for water reuse, to be finalised by the end of 2016. We continue to contribute to this.
 

Investment in the water sector
The European Parliament’s Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development intergroup, chaired by Michel Dantin MEP will hold a conference on investments in the water sector together with the intergroup on sustainable long term investments. This will take place on 28 April in Brussels. Read our press release on investment in water here.
 

Regulatory fitness of chemicals – public consultation
The European Commission published a public consultation on the regulatory fitness of chemicals legislation (excluding REACH). Its objective is to obtain stakeholder views on the functioning of the legislative framework for chemicals. The deadline is 27 May. Find out more here.


World Water Day
We issued a press release to mark the UN’s World Water Day. You can read it here. A lot of other organisations – including EurEau members EVEL - celebrated the occasion. Read about them here.
 

The European Benchmarking Co-operation
The European Benchmarking Co-operation invites drinking and wastewater utilities to participate in this year’s International Benchmark Exercise (IB2015). More here.
 

News from our members
Denmark have revised the framework in the water sector. Read more here.

The next edition of the BIPE/FP2E study, which gathers economic, environmental and technical key data regarding the French public water and sanitation services will be available in English in July.

FP2E recently took part in organising a conference in collaboration with the French Mayors Association (AMF). The theme was territorial reform currently being implemented and the application of the “NOTRe” law and its impacts on the organisation of public water and sanitation services and governance. One of the main pieces of information is that a large number of services, specific to France, will be quartered, from 35 000 to less than 10 000 services.

April 1 marks the one year deadline before the market for non-domestic water customers opens in England.
 

Important dates
10 May: EurEau President Bruno Tisserand will speak at ‘Water reuse in the framework of the circular economy’ in Madrid.

12 May: Materials in contact with drinking water conference in Brussels.

26 May: Arjen Frentz will speak on behalf of EurEau at the INSPIRE Congress in Rotterdam.

30 May–3 June: EU Green Week – Investing for a greener future. We welcome invitations to participate in or speak at events. Contact Caroline for more information.
 

You can keep up with all the EurEau news via our website, our EU Matters blog and on our Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter  feeds. For more events, visit our calendar