The Critical Review of the Performance of the EU Water Framework Directive in Improving the Rivers’ Water Quality and the Impediments in its Implementation

Water is essential in the disposition and growth of living species, especially in the maintenance and survival of human life. History divulges that all the civilisations, countries and big cities were established along the main river courses/ water channels merely because of the importance of water in human life. The increased world population has increased the depletion of this natural resource. Anthropogenic activities pollute water resources by throwing physical, chemical, biological and industrial waste in these streams. The division of regions into states and countries and different ruling bodies in different areas of the world have purported the issues of maintaining control of water bodies and their rights of use within the river basins based on the trans-borders flow/ catchment areas and multinational utilisation. European Union, since its inception, has been issuing different directives regarding the environment, pollution, water usage, ecology and hydrology. In 2000, a detailed directive named “Water Framework Directive (EU WFD 2000)” was formulated by the European Union encompassing significant aspects of all previous directives with the direct responsibility of each member state to arrange implementation of this directive by incorporating this directive in legislation and establishment of independent bodies/ agencies for its implementation in true letter and spirit. Three years were given to incorporate the water framework directive as law. Then further specified periods were given to implement it in a phased manner from 2003 to 2015. Though a tremendous change in attitude towards maintaining the water quality, partial implementation of EU WFD in member states has been achieved, unfortunately; still, the target is too far away, especially in tackling the heavily modified water bodies despite multi-billion investments by public and private sectors. An endeavour has been made to critically review/ evaluate the challenges in implementing the water framework directive and the efforts of member states to overcome these challenges. The scope of this paper is to review some of the available literature on the subject in the form of books, European Union directives, conventions/ conference minutes/ proceedings/ documents, assessment reports, documents of environmental agencies of member states and different presentations followed by a suitable conclusion as per own understanding from literature and assessment by different sources.