Civil Society and the Governance of Water Services: German Political Parties’ Reactions to Right2Water

Rita Triebskorn,Jale Tosun

doi:10.3390/w12030743

Abstract

The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) Right2Water asked for guaranteed water quality and quantity all over Europe, and demanded that water services remain in the hands of public entities. Support for Right2Water was particularly pronounced in Germany. The German organisers managed to collect 16 times more signatures than the minimum necessary to be counted towards the quorum. How have the German political parties reacted to the overwhelming public support for Right2Water? To answer this question, we examined the election manifestos of the main political parties, published for the federal elections in 2005, 2009, 2013, and 2017, and the elections to the European Parliament in 2004, 2009, 2014, and 2019. We concentrated on one specific goal of Right2Water, which refers to preventing the liberalisation of water services in the European Union. We expected the attention to and positioning of the liberalisation of water services to vary across the individual German parties. Since Right2Water was organised by public service trade unions and pursues an anti-liberalisation agenda, we expected left-wing parties to have laid a greater emphasis on this issue than right-wing parties, and for them to have adopted positions that aligned with the goals of the ECI. Our empirical findings show that a left–right division exists among the parties concerning the attention they paid to this issue as well as how they positioned themselves.

Highlights

Water utilities face numerous challenges related to the maintenance and modernisation of infrastructure, the ensuring of water supply and water quality, and the reduction of energy use [1].If the water utilities fail to adequately meet these challenges, it can result in a variety of negative outcomes including public health risks, lower levels of service, price increases, and reduced contributions to environmental and climate protection [2]
For the 2014 elections to the European Parliament, the party supported the exclusion of water services from the Concessions Directive, which we coded as an anti-liberalisation stance
We examined how political parties in Germany reacted to enhanced public attention on the issue of liberalising and privatising water services

Summary

Introduction

Water utilities face numerous challenges related to the maintenance and modernisation of infrastructure, the ensuring of water supply and water quality, and the reduction of energy use [1].If the water utilities fail to adequately meet these challenges, it can result in a variety of negative outcomes including public health risks, lower levels of service, price increases, and reduced contributions to environmental and climate protection [2]. With respect to the quality of drinking water, the presence of micropollutants has become a matter of concern over recent decades [3,4] This is especially the case in areas or countries that produce their drinking water, both from groundwater and, in high percentages, from surface waters [5]. In these cases, conventional treatment methods, which primarily aim to reduce pathogens and nutrient loads, are not sufficient to provide drinking water free from chemicals [6] or pharmaceuticals [4,7]. Sudhakaran et al [7] have reviewed different treatment

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Results

Conclusion