Commission Memorandum - Brussels, 1 June 2004

Bathing Water Report 2003 - Overview of the results for individual Member States

Austria

Austria has a good and stable bathing water quality. Compliance with the ‘imperative’ standards went up to 97.4%. The compliance rate with the more stringent ‘guide’ values of the directive was 80% - a record for Austria. Austria also monitors its waters well.

Belgium

During the 2003 season, Belgium’s coastal waters were again 100% compliant with the Directive’s ‘imperative' standards. However, conformity of fresh waters with the 'imperative' standards dropped in 2003 by 10 percentage points to only 84.3%.

Denmark

Denmark produced its best results ever for coastal waters and reached compliance rates over 96% for both coastal and fresh waters. For both water types, more bathing waters were in conformity with the stricter ‘guide’ values than in previous years. The number of freshwater bathing zones was stable.

Germany

Bathing water quality improved in 2003 for coastal waters and in particular for fresh waters, erasing the previous season’s downward trend. Compliance is over 97% for coastal water and over 95% for fresh water. Compared to the 2002 season, the number of official German bathing sites decreased by 1.5%. Particularly with regard to fresh waters, Germany has a growing number of beaches where bathing is banned (about 2.5%).

Spain

Spain achieved status quo with last year in terms of coastal water quality and created some new coastal bathing sites. Spain’s fresh water compliance soared – and this is the biggest surprise of this report - by more than 10 percentage points to almost 96% conformity. The Commission regrets that Spain de-commissioned once more 5% of its fresh water bathing sites. Since 1994, Spain has lost 65% of all fresh water sites in this way. Clearly, the more “difficult” sites are de-listed, the greater the overall percentage compliance rate will become.

Finland

Finland’s fresh water quality compliance is at a high level (97.6%), but there was a 5 percentage point drop in compliance of the coastal zones - from 98% in 2002 down to 93% in 2003. This was mainly due to an increase in insufficiently sampled coastal zones (4.9%) and the banning of bathing at 1% of the coastal beaches. The Commission regrets that Finland de-listed 12% of its coastal bathing areas and 4% of all fresh water zones in 2003.

France

In 2003, France’s compliance with the Directive made a giant step forward, both for coastal as well as for fresh waters. Both compliance rates are around 95%. Compared to 2002, beaches were much better monitored and there were no bathing bans. Unfortunately, France de-listed almost 4% of its fresh water sites in 2003.

Greece

Again, Greece has a very good record with 99.9% of the coastal zones conforming to the Directive. All fresh water zones are compliant (however there are only 4 classified freshwater sites for the entire country, which seems very low). More than 97% of the Greek coastal water reaches the ‘guide’ standards of the Directive, which indicates a very high quality level. Monitoring is done correctly, no listed beaches have a bathing ban. Greece added a further 1% of new bathing sites in coastal waters in 2003.

Ireland

Ireland underwent a slight drop in coastal bathing water quality compared to 2002. The quality levels still remained very good, especially for fresh waters, where, like before, a 100% compliance level was reached. Still, the Commission believes that only nine classified fresh water bathing sites is very low, compared to other Atlantic and even northern European Member States. Bathing was not banned at any site, and there were no bathing sites removed from the list in 2003.

Italy

Italy maintained previous levels of coastal water quality (95.4% compliance in 2003), but experienced for the second consecutive year a drop in fresh water quality. The compliance rate on imperative values went down from 93.6% in 2001 to 76.1% in 2002 and to only 70.6% in 2003. The authorities informed the Commission that this drop in compliance in freshwaters was due to drought conditions. Also for the second consecutive year, the number of bathing sites where bathing was banned increased significantly: in 2003 more than 27% of all Italian fresh waters had a bathing ban, against 14.8% in 2002. The Commission is puzzled by this trend and will seek clarification from Italy.

Luxembourg

Luxembourg has only 20 classified bathing waters; at three of these sites (15%) bathing has been banned for several years. The Commission is concerned that since 1998, no progress has been made in improving and reopening these three sites. In addition, in 2003, one of the remaining 17 sites did not comply, which means the overall compliance rate in 2003 was only 80%.

The Netherlands

The Netherlands have an extremely good record: 100% compliance for coastal zones, 98.4% compliance for fresh water zones, good monitoring and hardly any zones banned. This season, the Netherlands added four fresh water bathing zones to reach an impressive 561 fresh water areas.

Portugal

With compliance rates of 98.4% for coastal waters and 96.4% for fresh waters, no banned bathing waters and a very good monitoring policy, Portugal still displays excellent conformity with the imperative values of the Directive. Still, whereas 90% of the coastal bathing sites comply with the stricter (non imperative) ‘guide’ values, only 11% of the fresh water sites reach this quality mark. This indicates that for many fresh waters, compliance with the imperative standards was ‘just’ reached and that an effort remains to be made on fresh waters. Compared to the 2002 season, Portugal added nine coastal bathing sites and no less than 13 fresh water zones (+30%) to the list of monitored bathing waters.

Sweden

In 2003, Sweden reached a high degree of compliance (96.3% for coastal waters and 98.5% for fresh bathing waters). Monitoring was at a high standard. There were no banned beaches, and Sweden increased the number of listed fresh water bathing sites. This and other examples illustrate that when bathing water quality is good, no de-listing or banning is needed.

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom reached a very high degree of compliance with the Directive (98.4% for coastal water and 100% for fresh water). The monitoring frequency is respected correctly, no listed beaches have a bathing ban and the UK added seven bathing sites in coastal waters in 2003. The only point of concern is that there are only eleven fresh water bathing areas in the United Kingdom, which seems extremely low in comparison with other Atlantic and even northern European member states.