Recently the European Union has approved the EU Water Framework Directive (EU-WFD). This directive claims that by the end of 2015 a “good status of surface water“ and a “good status of groundwater” should be achieved (EU, 2000). To that end, the EU-WFD provides several guidelines for monitoring the water bodies, leaving the practical implementation to the local governments. Each region has to d...

In the United Kingdom the Environment Agency of England and Wales have developed a number of initiatives to assist in implementing the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) including Catchment Management Strategies (CAMSs) and the Resource Assessment Management (RAM) Framework. These processes include setting river flow objectives and establishing best practice for the assessment of water reso...

The European Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC (WFD) has been implemented over the past 20 years, using physicochemical, biological and hydromorphological elements to assess ecological status of surface waters. Benthic diatoms (i.e., phytobenthos) are one most common quality (BQEs) used in water monitoring particularly successful detecting eutrophication, organic pollution acidification. Her...

Member States of the EU are presently involved in the enforcement of the Directive of the Council and European Parliament 2000/60/CE, the so-called Water Framework Directive (WFD), establishing a frame for the common water policy of the Union. A major objective of the WFD is to reach within 2015 a good ecological status for all relevant surface water bodies of the Union territory. The assessmen...

Despite the fact that mainstreaming of climate change into existing EU sectoral policies is a key aim, empirical knowledge of how it works in practice remains scarce. With this paper we explore the degree to which climate considerations are taken into account in the implementation of one of the most influential pieces of European water legislation, the Water Framework Directive and, more import...

The ongoing debate on water policies in Spain is characterised by a traditional paradigm, dominated by the intervention on hydrological systems through the construction and management of infrastructure, which is progressively being abandoned but is currently still strong while the emergence of new management approaches. Climate change and the Water Framework Directive (WFD) are, in addition, th...