Bathing Water: Commission moves against Finland and Denmark

The European Commission has decided to send Reasoned Opinions to Finland and Denmark for non-respect of the Bathing Waters Directive. Both countries fail to fully meet the Directive's standards for water quality for all bathing areas. They have also failed to ensure that bathing waters are sufficiently sampled in all their territories.

Commenting on the decision, Margot Wallström, Commissioner for the environment said: "The Commission is determined to take a tough stance on bathing water quality. We are looking to all Member States to ensure that their bathing waters live up to EU standards".

The Bathing Water Directive (Council Directive 76/160/EEC concerning the quality of bathing water) is important for public health, aiming to ensure that bathing waters meet minimum quality criteria by establishing a set of binding and guide Community standards (or values) for a range of key parameters (such as bacteria present) and by requiring Member States to carry out regular water quality monitoring. The legal deadline for complying with the standards expired in 1985. Under the Directive Member States must supply annual reports to the Commission.

A Reasoned Opinion is the second warning letter under Article 226 of the EC Treaty. The Commission already announced similar legal moves against other Member States in December 1999 and this action is a part of this horizontal assessment of compliance with the Bathing Water Directive (see IP/00/14).

As regards Finland, the Reasoned Opinion deals with the continued failure to ensure compliance with the standards set in the Directive. For the 1998 bathing season, Finland's compliance rate under the Directive was 84% with mandatory values and 69.1% for guide values for coastal waters, and 83.2% for mandatory values and 77.3% for guide values for fresh waters. The initial results for the 1999 bathing season show that problems remain. The Reasoned Opinion also deals with Finland's insufficient sampling of bathing waters as required by Article 6 of the Directive.

With regard to Denmark, the Reasoned Opinion covers similar ground to the one issued against Finland. For the 1998 bathing season 94.3% of coastal waters complied with the mandatory values and 85.6% complied with the guide values.

For fresh waters, 90.3% complied with the mandatory values and 77.9% complied with the guide values in 1998. The Reasoned Opinion also deals with Denmark's failure to ensure that bathing waters are sufficiently sampled.

The latest version of the bathing waters report for the whole of the European Union can be found at the following web site:

http://europa.eu.int/water/water-bathing/tourist.html

From the report it can be seen which beaches and bathing areas in Finland and Denmark do not comply with the Directive's provisions.