Bathing water quality excellent in Europe

Brussels – Ahead of the summer season, good news comes for European citizens: European waters are mostly excellent for bathing (85.4 per cent). That’s according to a report published today (May 28) by the European Environment Agency (EEA), which, in cooperation with the European Commission, checked the state of bathing waters in 2023 in all EU countries plus Switzerland and Albania. Ninety-six per cent of all bathing waters meet minimum quality standards, and only 1.5 per cent are classified as poor.

The controlled areas are near marine and lake shorelines where bathing is possible. The Bathing Water Directive provides a quality classification based on two microbiological parameters: the percentage of presence of Escherichia coli and the intestinal enterococci. Once the waters are analyzed, the European Environment Agency divides them into four categories: excellent, good, sufficient, and poor. The European directive provides for a bathing ban with the display of an information sign for bathing waters classified as poor for at least five consecutive years. 

In Italy, according to EEA’s report, 90.3 per cent of bathing waters are in excellent condition, while only 1.3 per cent were categorized as poor. A total of 5533 bathing sites in Italy were monitored in 2023. As for water in poor condition, it has decreased from 93 sites in 2020 to 72 today. However, the report recalls that during the period 2018-2022, 50 bathing sites in the EU were consecutively classified as poor, including 29 in Italy. Among these places where bathing is banned is the “Nord fiume Musone” beach in Porto Recanati in the Marche region, which has been found to be polluted and surveilled by the region for several years already. EEA has provided an interactive map to allow citizens to search for their bathing place and see the ratings.

The report highlights how the quality of salt waters tends to be better than inland waters. Central Europe suffers the most, where relatively small lakes, ponds, and rivers with weak flow rates are found. This makes them much more susceptible than coastal areas to short-term pollution caused by heavy rainfall or drought, especially in summer. The European Environment Agency also mentioned that climate change negatively affects bathing: rising temperatures, for example, create an environment conducive to an increase in Escherichia coli.

It is feasible to make a polluted environment suitable for swimming. One example is Paris, which, in preparation for the upcoming Olympics and Paralympics, decided to make the Seine a swimming area to host triathlon swimming competitions in the city centre. This was made possible by a substantial investment, more than €1.4 billion, to finance two water treatment plants and a reservoir of about 50,000 cubic meters (a tank sufficient to meet the annual water consumption of more than 1,000 people). The tank will be filled during heavy rains to purify the water and feed it into the Seine.