Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (91/271/EEC)

State of play

24 November 2004

Commission actions:

(1)Check of the Directive implementation

There are currently a significant number of infringement cases either pending or already launched in relation to the urban waste water treatment directive. All infringement cases are based on detailed technical assessments of the situation[1]. The following infringement procedures for the UWWTD have been raised by the Commission against Member States:

-Court cases: 2 Court judgements during the second half of 2004 have been issued for France (C-280/02, on 23/09/04)[2] and for Belgium (C-027/03 on July 2004) in relation to the lack of designation of sensitive areas, and lack of infrastructure in sensitive areas (deadline of 31/12/1998). In total 8 cases pending in the ECJ for UWWTD.

-Infringements in relation to sensitive areas: at the beginning of 2004 there were 11 horizontal infringement cases (8 out of 11 in the form of reasoned opinion) and 15 single cases (based on complaints) in relation to identification of sensitive areas and lack of infrastructure in those areas (deadline of 31/12/1998) for agglomerations of >10000 p.e., discharging waste water into sensitive areas. During the second half of 2004, 2 reasoned opinions (RO) for horizontal cases and 4 RO for single cases have been issued.

-Infringements in relation to normal areas: 7 infringement cases (in the form of the letter of formal notice) in relation of the lack of infrastructure for agglomerations >15000p.e., discharging into normal areas (deadline of 31/12/2000) have been issued in July 2004.

During the 2005 Commission will continue its technical analyses and move pending infringement cases, as the implementation of the Directive is still not satisfactory according to the data reported by the MS.

(2)Commission Reports

The 3rd Commission Report[3] reflects the situation of waste water treatment and performance in agglomerations discharging into sensitive areas, waste water treatment in normal areas, status of collecting systems, situation of waste water treatment in big cities, status on industrial waste water treatment with respect to Art.13 and status on sewage sludge production and disposal (for more information see Annex 2 of this document).

The on-going activity of the Commission is to prepare the 4th Commission Report for adoption by the Commission (foreseen by the end of 2005) and publication (foreseen by the first half of 2006). The report will reflect the status on treatment levels and performance in normal areas for reference year 2001 or 2002, in sensitive areas and status of wastewater treatment in big cities.

(3)UWWTD Committee and UWWTD-REP activities

UWWTD Committee (Art. 18) meeting was held on 23 November. The main outputs:

–A reference background document on reporting for UWWTD for all EU-25 has been presented. Principal agreement on the document has been achieved. Harmonised reporting reference years and deadlines to report to the Commission for all EU-25 (including transitional periods) in relation to all reporting obligations under the UWWTD particularly for the Art. 16, 17 and 15 has been achieved. These are the main articles to assess the progress on implementation of the Directive on the continuously. The document after the minor editorial comments will be presented to the next Committee meeting for final agreement and voting.

–9 guidance documentsdrafted by the reporting work group (UWWTD-REP) have been discussed. Principle agreement has been achieved on the following guidance documents:

“Definition ofAgglomeration”, “Calculation of the load of an agglomeration and organic design capacity”, “Big city. Treatment requirements for big cities. Evaluation and visualisation results“, “Complying collecting system”, “Urban waste water treatment plants falling under requirements for UWWTD”, “Application of Art.5(4)”, “Complying treatment level and complying agglomeration”, “Change of the load of an agglomeration”. The documents will be finalised, discussed during the next UWWTD-REP meeting and will be presented for final approval to the next Committee meeting.

–By the end of 2005 the Commission foresees to issue new standardised questionnaire for the verification of the compliance-check of all reporting obligations of the Directive to all Member States.The MS will be asked to update the data and information on the UWWTD implementation for already passed deadlines. The reference year to report will be 2004. The structure and introduction to the new standardised questionnaire was presented to the Committee. It was agreed to work further on the new questionnaire in the UWWTD-REP during 2005 and to present it to the Committee for final agreement as soon as it will be ready during 2005.

–Plans for the Commission, the Committee and UWWTD-REP for 2005: 4-5 meetings of UWWTD-REP and 1-2 UWWTD Committee meetings. The main objectives will be:

a)to produce “Guidance document on reporting for UWWTD”,

b)to issue the new standardised questionnaire on reporting for UWWTD, and

c)to try to extend the existing UWWTD data base on reporting for EU25 including all reporting obligations under UWWTD into one single electronic format accordingly.

–Workshop on reporting for new Member States (held on 22 November 2004). Main outputs: the overall reporting cycle, the main reporting obligations, deadlines including the transitional periods have been explained. Reporting under Art.16, Art.17, Art.15 has been clarified. Five presentations of experience-transfer on reporting structure and exercise from NL, D, FR, UK and Slovenia have been given. All new MS except Poland took part.

Annex 1

The ECJ judgement C-280/02 concernsFrance and is related to the breach of the Directive requirements in relation to non-designation of sensitive areas and lack of infrastructure for 130 agglomerations discharging into sensitive areas.

The ECJ ruling addresses the following points:

  1. Broader interpretation of purposes of Dir.91/271/EEC (which is based on the legal base of the Directive, i.e. Article 130s (now Article 175 EC) in order to achieve the objectives of Article 130r (now Article 174 EC)). It was stated that

“undesirable disturbances are beyond the aquatic ecosystem and include all ecosystems of Article 174 EC Treaty”. In this case therefore the ECJ extended the meaning of “undesirable” disturbance of Article 2(11) beyond the mere protection of aquatic ecosystems.

undesirability must also be considered to be established where there are significant harmful effects not only on fauna and flora but also on man, the soil, water, air or landscape.

undesirable disturbances of the balance of organism present in the water are: species changes involving loss of ecosystem biodiversity, nuisances due to proliferation of opportunistic macro algae and sever outbreaks of toxic or harmful phytoplankton.

  1. Broader interpretation of the term - "eutrophication"

highlighting that the MS has the obligation to designate sensitive areas also in those cases when waterbodies could become eutrophic if protective actions are not taken. In this broader interpretation of eutrophication results therefore an increase in the number of waterbodies, which have to be designated as sensitive areas as they are at risk.

  1. Important guidance on component parts of definition of "eutrophication" by

clearly defining four main criteria describing eutrophication and extensively explaining the meaning of those criteria.

stating that the cause-effect link does not have to be shown separately or additionally. It means, for e.g., that enrichment of nutrients and accelerated growth of algae are already two important criteria for the water body to become eutrophic, and there is no need additionally to show causal link between those two elements

highlighting that criterion “deterioration of water quality” means also deterioration of the colour, the appearance, taste or odour of the water or any change which prevents or limits water use such as tourism (because of algae blooms), fishing, fish farming, clamming and shellfish farming, abstraction of drinking water or cooling of industrial installations.

  1. Need to decouple duty to designate sensitive areas from whether or not agglomerations with more than 10 000 p.e. exist in catchment, but also considering that

it is not important to define what percentage of pollution goes from urban waste water discharges or from agricultural pollution since both of them contribute to eutrophication of waterbody (para 52-54) as 91/271/EEC and 91/676/EEC are complimentary. When urban wastewater discharges involve in combination to nitrate flows of agricultural origin, MS have to designate waterbody in question as being as a sensitive area in accordance with the directive 91/271/EEC

the significance of nutrient input to water body should be not only importance of the percentage of nutrient input but also the amounts of nutrients in tonnes has to be considered and the decision has to be taken on case-by-case basis

Annex 2. Short summary of the 3rd Commission report

  1. In 12 MS, which apply tertiary treatment, 1242 agglomerations are covered by the obligation of more stringent treatment. 559 of them (representing 42% of concerned load) provided required treatment and were complying with the directive by January 2002. (DK and AT in full compliance, D, L, NL applies Art.5(4)). Most of MS plan to achieve conformity with the directive by 2005 or by 2008 at the latest. Total organic load of agglomerations taken into account for tertiary treatment increased from 198 millions p.e. in 1998 to 210 millions p.e. in 2002.
  2. Treatment performance in agglomerations discharging into sensitive areas excluding D and NL (which apply Art; 5(4)) as well as FR and ES (which did not supply data in time), only about 44% of waste water load was (according to the Commissions opinion) treated sufficiently in sense of the Directive before discharge ( with big variations from MS to MS), for example, DK achieved 99% of conformity in treatment performance, AT – 79%, but PT- only 4%, EL and FIN – 10 %, L – 13%, B – 22%, UK – 27%.
  3. Concerning the situation on treatment level in normal areas on 31 December 2000, 2698 agglomerations have been affected by the deadline of 2000 and 1832 agglomerations from 2698 (or 69%, or 181 280 991 p.e. from the total 261 662 171 p.e.) had required treatment level in place.
  4. In total, MS reported 8181 agglomerations, representing a load of 469 269 723 p.e. (for Art. 4, 5)
  5. Report also presents a summary

on the status on collection systems (Art.3) on the situation in January 2002 in SA and on situation of 31 December 2000 in NA and indicates that 80% of collecting systems had been in conformity (i.e. 4753 out of 5932)

on wastewater treatment in EU cities by January 2002. 309 in NA (232 of them have secondary treatment and 21 – have no treatment at all), and 247 cities in SA (155 have complete more stringent treatment and 4 – no treatment at all). In comparison with 1998 (the 2nd Commission report) treatment situation by 2002 improved significantly. A number of cities providing more stringent treatment increased from 78 to 205, number of cities without any treatment decreased from 37 to 26, and number of cities of which insufficient information was available decreased from 134 to 11. According to the Commission’s opinion, in total 387 out of 556 major urban centres in EU provided sufficient wastewater treatment by the beginning of 2002.

of the situation on industrial wastewater directly discharged into the receiving water bodies (Art.13), situation on the generation, disposal and reuse of sewage sludge.

  1. The situation in each MS is described in separate chapter. Report also contains the information on the infringement cases for UWWTD and developments of further activities by the Commission.

1

[1]It is possible that there are still information updates from the member states recently arrived which has been not taken into account during the last two weeks.

[2] See Annex 1 for more explanation

[3] COM(2004) 248. English and German published versions currently distributed, other language versions – is still in Commission’s publication office. Web-site address to find the report in all 11 official langiages -