On 09-10.06.2016 DG Environment of the European Commission held the informal EU Water and Marine Directors’ meeting. The Water Directors discussed a number of priority topics such as circular economy and water, water reuse and the ‘watch list’ of priority substances in groundwater.

The circular economy policy actions on water and its link to the implementation of the EU water policy has the following ongoing activities:

1.      Commission Guidelines on “Water Reuse in integrated water planning and management". The European Water Directors recently agreed on these guidelines: you can download them here. The guidance will help to incorporate water reuse into the River Basin management plans and implementing the Programme of measures of the Water Framework Directive in realizing circular economy aspects in the river basins.

2.     Progress on developing a new legislative proposal by 2017 on: “Minimum quality requirements for water reuse for irrigation and groundwater recharge”. In support to this action, the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission is continuing to work on a technical report that will be available by the end of 2016. A description on the development of the legislative proposal is available to download from here.

3.      The European Commission and the Water Directors adopted the terms of Reference on how to create more favourable conditions for water reuse in industries via actions to develop new BREF's under Industrial Emmissions directive. The document is available to download from here.

4.      To support research and innovation in water as a contribution to reaching good ecological status in 173 river basins in Europe, the European Commission is currently working to create a Water innovation facility under the Horizon 2020 Risk Finance Instrument InnoFin. It is expected that the instrument will be ready by the end of 2016. It is foreseen that it will be operated by the European Investment Bank for loans and loan guarantees to highly innovative demonstration projects (first market replications) for water.

5.      Several Directorates of the European Commission and the European Investment Bank are developing a new opportunity for raising EU funds for investments in water. Current discussions are concentrated on the purpose of developing a new multi-thematic fund with sub-funds for water to leverage investment in water projects. It intends to create an opportunity to combine different types of funding via loans, guarantees and equity investment to mid-size water projects.
A short document describing the availability of additional funds for water is available to download here.

Other policy updates:

·         The Water directors also discussed the challenge of water pollution by microplastics. To address this challenge the European Commission is planning to develop an EU plastics strategy.

·         The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission is working on the European pharmaceuticals strategy. The Water directors have been asked to provide their countries’ approach to pharmaceuticals with the purpose to collect the EU-wide approaches.

·         The Directors highlighted the necessity to work along the full product life cycle with a priority on measures at sources. Technological and non-technological innovations are here of high importance.

·         Marine directors are planning to collaborate with policy representatives of Fisheries in order to streamline and coordinate better EU Marine protection and EU Fisheries policies.

·         The Water Directors also adopted the report on the 'Groundwater Watch List: Pharmaceuticals Pilot Study. Monitoring Data Collection and Initial Analysis' that is available to download from here. Followed by this study, the ‘Watch list’ concept paper is planned to be developed starting from September 2016. Furthermore, a summry report on “Groundwater threshold values (TVs)” was elaborated with contributions from 24 member states and is available to download from here.

For further information, please contact Violeta Kuzmickaite