The good news is clear: all Member States sharing the Danube Basin district have received good scores on their progress toward fulfilling the requirements of the EU Water Framework Directive.

The official website of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) has posted a scoreboard monitoring
the progress of the directive’s implementation. This scoreboard gives a quick overview of the state-of-play of the Member States regarding the legal transposition and the implementation elements of the WFD, the deadlines of which were during 2004 and 2005. The scoreboard reflects whether or not a Member State has delivered the required reports; it does not make any judgement on the quality of the report.

However the good news is evident: all Member States sharing the Danube Basin district have fulfilled the WFD requirement so far and have handed in national Article 5 reports, which provide characteristics of the river basin, details on the impact of human activities, and an economic analysis. It is also important to note that Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia and Montenegro have all submitted Article 5 reports on a voluntary basis.

In addition to the national reports, the ICPDR, acting as the platform for coordination of the WFD issues of basin-wide concern, has submitted the ‘Danube Basin Analysis – basin-wide overview’. The Danube Basin Analysis, available from the ICPDR Secretariat, forms the framework over the national reports and highlights the issues of basin-wide importance.

For more information, please visit:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/water/water-framework/scoreboard.html

Jasmine Bachmann
works on public participation in the ICPDR Permanent Secretariat,
and is the Executive Editor of Danube Watch.