Abstract
The Water Framework Directive (WFD) 2000/60/EC was issued to combine, renew and clarify the variety of legislations and responsibilities to a common implementation strategy aiming to achieve good ecological and chemical water quality for European waters. In this review, a comparative assessment has been attempted to provide the analysis of the interactions of the most important affecting parameters (legal actions, governance, characterization, applied methods and strict principles) estimating the improvement of the overall ‘ecological and chemical status’ in the last twenty years. Based on the Water Information System for Europe (WISE), European Commission Reports, the related references and focusing on surface water bodies, there was an attempt to find if there are any improvements over surface water quality directing on the desired environmental goals. For ecological, as for chemical classification, there has exclusively been used the ‘one out-all out’ principle and this choice proved to be safe and ideal. It was also found that about 20% of the water bodies have improved their ecological status. The percentage of water bodies at ‘unknown’ status decreased considerably succeeding the improvement of ‘chemical status’ identification. Very surprising was that lakes and coastal waters have achieved better quality status than rivers and transitional waters. In conclusion, both ‘ecological and chemical’ surveillance are complementary and of fundamental importance for achieving the desirable ‘Good Water Body Status’ directing to the optimum environmental objectives, and they are the key features of the estimated and expected success of the WFD in the next years.
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Zacharias, I., Liakou, P. & Biliani, I. A Review of the Status of Surface European Waters Twenty Years after WFD Introduction. Environ. Process. 7, 1023–1039 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40710-020-00458-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40710-020-00458-z