Assessment of WFD River Basin Management Plans State of Play SCG 23 February 2010 Jorge Rodriguez, Ursula Schmedtje, Marieke van Nood WFD Team DG Environment, European Commission

What was it about? Commission prepares assessment report of RBMP (Art. 18) by 2012 2012 report will be linked to: Review of strategy on Water Scarcity and Droughts EU Adaptation Policy – next phase -> EU BLUEPRINT FOR WATER POLICY

EC concept paper on the assessment of RBMPs Developed as a first step for assessment templates Discussed with Water Directors in November 2009 Written comments received from AT, DE, FR, NL, SK Contained key questions that intend to guide the assessment of various aspects of RBMPs Contained questions that need to be elaborated in templates, to be answered by EC (not by Member States) Contained questions from WFD obligations and ‘nice-to-haves’ After all, final analysis needs to provide strategic conclusions

What information will be used in the assessments? Completeness and screening steps will be mainly based on the WISE electronic delivery For the in-depth assessment, as the depth of the assessment increases, there will be more need to use the information contained in the RBMPs and any relevant background document In particular, WISE electronic delivery is not designed to report the most complex methodological aspects of WFD implementation

Background documents WFD and CIS guidance documents require transparency on a number of key elements of RBMP Level of detail of plans will vary among Member States: in some cases the RBMPs may include sufficient detail, in others they do not It is not possible to generalise which topics will require which kinds of background documents One exception is the Programme of Measures, that is a background document in all cases as the plans contain only a summary It is up to the Member States to judge which background documents are provided to the Commission to be the basis of the RBMP assessment WISE delivery explicitly requests these documents Topics that will likely require background documents are HMWB, classification of ecological status, justification of exemptions

Assessment tools We are developing 2 main assessment tools – per RBD: Summaries WISE electronic delivery Assessment templates

Summary of WISE electronic delivery 1 summary per RBD Extracts information from WISE delivery into a readable format: tables/graphs, methodological (textual) information in original language and machine translation into English To be used mainly for completeness check and screening Will be generated automatically in summer 2010 7

What’s next After 22 March: Contact MS in case of unclarities (e.g. on background documents) Intermediate feedback through CIS Working Group D, Strategic Coordination Group, Water Directors 170 RBMP assessments - > 27 Member State assessments - > 10-15 page Communication

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