European Water Law and Hydropolitics by Gábor Baranyai

European Water Law and Hydropolitics by Gábor Baranyai

Author:Gábor Baranyai
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030225414
Publisher: Springer International Publishing


8.3.4 Transboundary Cooperation Under EU Water Law and Policy

As mentioned above, the WFD follows a basin approach. Consequently, the directive foresees close cooperation among member states sharing international river basins as such cooperation is a quintessential element of the European model of water governance (Recital 14). The basin approach is, however, manifested mainly through certain procedural and planning requirements and mechanisms member states must follow, rather than hard and fast substantive rules.

First of all, member states are required to coordinate their efforts aimed at meeting the environmental objectives of the directive for the entire river basin or river basin district (Recital 35). This implies that where a river basin is covered by the territory of more than one member state, it must be assigned to a so-called international river basin. When no agreement is reached on the designation of such international basin by the riparians concerned, any such member state may request the European Commission to facilitate the process. Shared river basins must be subjected to the same administrative and institutional regimes as purely national basins (Art. 3.3.).

Second, member states must coordinate the management of their sections of the international river basin from the start of the planning phase all the way through the implementation process, in particular in the preparation and execution of river basin management plans and programmes of measures (Art. 3.4.). As a priority, the member states concerned are called upon to produce a single management plan for the entire river basin. This is, however, not an obligation of result. Should the coordinative efforts of member states fail to produce a comprehensive international river basin management plan, riparian governments are merely required to adopt uncoordinated national plans and measures for their respective parts of the international basin (Art. 13.2.). To settle the differences that may emerge in this process among member states the Commission may, again, be invited to facilitate (Art. 3.4.).

Third, where an international river basin districts falls partly outside the territory of the EU, the member states concerned are called upon to establish “appropriate” coordination with the non-EU riparian countries with a view to achieving the environmental objectives of the WFD for the entire basin (Art. 3.5.). This implies the rather soft requirement of “endeavouring” to produce a single river basin management plan in cooperation with the relevant non-EU riparians (Art. 13.3.).

Member states can fulfil the above coordination requirements through existing international mechanisms, basin organisations, bilateral water committees, etc. (Art. 3.4.). As shown above, most European basin commissions have indeed been mandated by their members to ensure the coordination of the implementation of the WFD in their respective basins. In some cases, like the Meuse, a new basin commission has even been set up with the specific objective to create a framework for WFD implementation. The expansion of the WFD’s programme beyond the territory of the EU also proved successful as all non-EU riparian states in the Rhine, Danube and Sava agreed to implement the WFD in their respective shares of the basin (see Sect. 8.



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