Overwhelming majority of bathing areas in 25 Member States meet EU standards

The annual bathing water report presented today by the European Commission reveals that the large majority of bathing sites across the European Union met EU hygiene standards in 2006. 96% of coastal bathing areas and 89% of bathing sites in rivers and lakes are in compliance with the mandatory values.. The removal of bathing sites from the official list has decreased but the Commission remains concerned about the delistings. The report provides useful water quality information for the millions of people who visit Europe's beaches every summer.

Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas said: "It is encouraging to see that the rate of compliance of freshwater bathing areas in 2006 has recovered from the disappointing decrease in 2005. I hope that this upward trend will continue and that freshwater bathing areas reach levels achieved by those in coastal areas. Despite these encouraging results I am very concerned by the number of bathing sites withdrawn from the list. Removing sites from the list because they are polluted is not a solution. Member States must instead draw up plans for cleaning up these polluted sites."

Twenty-five Member States reporting
Every year Member States are obliged to report on the quality of coastal and freshwater bathing areas located within their territory. Bathing areas are zones where bathing is explicitly authorised or where bathing is traditionally practised by a large number of bathers and not prohibited. In 2006 a total of 21,094 bathing areas were monitored, a slight increase from the previous year. Some 14,345 of these were in coastal waters and 6,749 in inland freshwater areas.
To determine their quality bathing waters are tested against a number of physical, chemical and microbiological parameters for which the Bathing Water Directive[1] sets out mandatory values. Member States must comply with the mandatory values but may adopt stricter standards or decide to follow the non-binding guide values also contained in the directive.

Freshwaters still lagging

For coastal bathing areas the proportion of sites complying with the mandatory standards remained constant at 96.1%. The number of coastal sites meeting the directive's more stringent, but non-binding, guide values decreased from 89.1% in 2005 to 88.4%.

The results for freshwaters show that they are regaining some of the ground lost in 2005. For the mandatory standards the compliance rate in 2006 was 88.6% compared to 85.7% in 2005. Compliance with the guide values increased slightly from 63.1% in 2005 to 63.8% in 2006. The positive results are mainly due to better sampling.

In 2006 Member States removed 88 coastal sites and 166 freshwater bathing zones from their national lists of sites subject to the directive's standards. The Commission is concerned that in some cases bathing sites are being de-listed to mask pollution problems and artificially improve compliance results without tackling the problem at source. The Commission has opened infringement cases against 11 Member States over de-listing(see IP/06/470).

The EU-15 EU Member States continue to have higher compliance rates than new Member States. But in 2006 compliance in the old Member States decreased slightly while in the new Member States compliance increased by about 25 percentage points. Two years after joining the EU compliance with mandatory values in the new Member States is 94.9% for coastal waters and 81.2% for fresh water bathing areas compared to 96.2% and 90.0% for the old Member States.

The report

A summary of the report is available in all official languages, while detailed country reports are available in English on the Commission’s bathing water website at http://ec.europa.eu/water/water-bathing/index_en.html

The website also contains maps and lists of bathing sites together with search functions. Lists of de-listed sites up to 2006 are also shown.

^[1] Directive 76/160/EEC concerning the quality of bathing water.