The European Commission (EC) is continuously working hand in hand with the representatives of the decision makers from the EU member states in the frame of the Common Implementation Strategy (CIS) to support the implementation of the EU water policy. The following articles will offer you the EU water policy updates on three topics:

• Water and agriculture;
• Water and nutrients: new Best Practice Guide
• Drinking Water directive: update requires changes?

Water and nutrients: new Best Practice Guide

The European Commission is in the frame of the CIS process also actively working to address the nutrients aspect. The purpose is to establish consistent and comparable nutrient boundaries across Europe. A working group on ecological status (ECOSTAT) is led by JRC (Joint research centre of the EC), Germany and UK.

The results so far achieved during 2015 are available to download from here.

Within the frame of the new CIS work programme for 2016-2018 the ambition of the EC in supporting the implementation of the Water Framework Directive is to elaborate a Best practice guide on the harmonisation of nutrient standards.

The guide will cover technical aspects of setting, using and checking nutrient boundaries used within Member States (a) on the harmonisation of nutrients standards and (b) on the use of supporting elements for the assessment of the ecological status (hydromorphology, physico-chemcal parametersincluding river basin specific pollutants). The examples of the application of the guidance on boundaries and the recommendations will be also part of the document.

Next steps:

To proceed with the work to be done in the frame of the Working Group on Ecological Status (WG ECOSTAT) of CIS, the Task Force from the experts from the member states will be completed in April 2016. We are happy to announce that Flanders is active in this working group and already have a representative.

The time frame of the whole work on the best practice guide is the following:

• Drafting of the Best Practice Guide (version 1) – end of 2016;
• Hands-on workshop of applying the Best Practice Guide  -  early 2017; 
• Testing of approaches by Member States – by mid-2017;
• Collect and incorporate experiences of pan-European application - autumn 2017;
• Finalise the Best Practice Guide - by the end of 2017.

Action from your side:

Vlakwa is inviting Flemish experts to analyse the results achieved in 2015 and to follow the developments of the guide. If you would like to contribute to the process by communicating Flemish achievements, new ideas, and may be concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us. In the course of 2016-2017 Vlakwa will update you on the developments of this document.