Europe’s rivers are sick and governments are failing to fix them

Europe faces a water crisis of its own making, and EU countries aren’t doing enough to avert it — that’s the central message from a major new report on the state of Europe’s water from the European Environmental Agency.
The report, published Tuesday, paints a picture of a continent covered with polluted rivers and degraded habitats, where overuse of fresh water and climate change’s worsening consequences are putting access to this most basic and essential of resources at risk.
It finds that the bloc is on track to miss its clean water targets under EU law — posing “serious challenges to water security, both today and in the future,” the EEA’s Trine Christiansen told reporters ahead of the report’s publication.
“Due to these pressures, we simply may not have enough water of good enough quality for the many purposes we would like to use it for,” Christiansen warned.
The health of Europe’s surface water is in a particularly poor state, the report found. Its rivers and lakes are turning brown, most protected fish and amphibian species in the EU risk becoming locally extinct, and harmful blooms of cyanobacteria are on the up.
Only 37 percent of Europe’s surface water bodies achieved “good” or “high” ecological status, under the EU’s Water Framework Directive, and only 29 percent achieved “good” chemical status from 2015 to 2021.
While countries have managed to avoid a worsening of the state of EU waters, “no overall improvement” has been detected since the last monitoring cycle. Their slow progress is, in part, down to “insufficient funding and insufficient integration of environmental objectives in sectoral policies,” according to the report.
Growing environmental pressures risk further worsening water quantity and quality. Major European rivers like the Danube, Rhine, Po and Ebro, which are crucial for the livelihoods of Europe’s largest urban centers and agricultural areas, will now be “strongly affected” by longer dry periods.
Unless “major changes” occur in lifestyles and economic development, Europe’s water resources will keep deteriorating, accelerated by ever-intensifying effects of climate change.
The EEA is calling on countries and sectors with a “heavy impact” on water like agriculture, energy and transport to “accelerate implementation [of environmental policies and initiatives] to deliver more tangible environmental improvements.”
The agricultural sector’s intensive use of nutrients and pesticides is severely impacting the quality of surface and groundwaters — and it’s “by far” the highest net water consumer in Europe.
The report comes as the European Parliament and the Council of the EU prepare to go head-to-head over new EU standards for monitoring water pollutants. EU countries have come under fire for trying to introduce more flexibility to the rules — while the European Parliament wants to make them more ambitious.
As for water resilience more broadly, governments have put the onus on the European Commission, with 21 EU countries last month calling on Brussels to take “concrete action” to “boost water security and resilience across the European Union.” 
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has pledged to come forward with a European Water Resilience Strategy, after failing to produce a promised Water Resilience Initiative in her previous mandate amid farmers’ protests earlier this year.
Christiansen wants to see von der Leyen’s incoming proposal revolve around three goals: reduce the use of water or chemicals, use water more efficiently — including through initiatives ramping up water reuse — and restore the EU’s ecosystems.
“We need to redouble our efforts to restore the health of our valued rivers, lakes, coastal waters, and other water bodies and to make sure this vital resource is resilient and secure for generations to come,” said Leena Ylä-Mononen, the executive director of EEA, in a statement.