The European Parliament and Council agreed this Tuesday (23.09.25) on a common text to revise the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and its “daughter Directives” on groundwater and surface water pollutants. EurEau welcomes the timing of the agreement, which comes not a moment too soon as Member States are already working on the next cycle of River Basin Management Plans (2028-2033).
However, we see with concern the new loopholes legalising some deteriorations of water bodies. While negotiators put some basic protections in place for resources used for drinking water, the general message sent by the co-legislators is that water pollution is fine as long as it lasts for less than a year, or if the pollutants come from a different water body. At a time when Member States are on track to miss the original WFD’s 2027 target, this is the opposite of what water resources need. The WFD has been a key building block of Europe’s water resilience for the past 25 years and must continue to be so. It should be reinforced, not weakened.
While we support the addition of an environmental quality standard for PFAS as a spur to stop emissions of these forever chemicals into the environment, we are concerned by the muddled approach retained in the agreement. Firstly, unlike the Commission proposal, the co-legislators chose to set completely different standards for PFAS in groundwater and PFAS in surface water. Secondly, the standards for groundwater are set at a looser level than for surface water but expected to become stricter in future, as and when PFAS values are amended in the Drinking Water Directive. This disregards the physical properties of most groundwater bodies, where very low renewal rates typically mean that pollution, once allowed in, can take decades or more to disappear. We urge policy makers to reduce PFAS emissions by introducing strict control-at-source measures. The burden should not be put on the shoulders of urban wastewater treatment plants, which represent just one of many pathways for PFAS releases to the environment.
That said, we strongly welcome the choice to maintain the WFD’s 20-year deadline to phase out priority hazardous substances, which the initial proposal had removed. The prospect of an impact assessment for the setup of an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme to cover monitoring costs is also very positive. We also support the introduction of a standard for “Pesticides Total” in surface water to motivate Member States to tackle these pollutants at the source.