Protecting Europe’s groundwater: legislative approaches and policy initiatives

There have been many positive recent developments in the groundwater legislation and policies of the 15 European Community member States (excluding Luxembourg), as the States recognise the importance of implementing the EC Groundwater Directive, The Integrated Pollution Prevention Control Directive and other relevant EC directives. All member States recognise the importance of protecting groundwater and most have enacted legislation and/or established policies to do so. However, there are significant variations in their approaches; these variations are reflected in their approaches to site registration and classification schemes. Similarly, some member States do not yet have policies that specify explicit risk assessment procedures, while others have formal risk assessment procedures in place for registering, classifying and prioritising sites.