Conference report: Protection of groundwater under the Water Framework Directive: Member States Obligations and recent judgements

Abstract

This paper is a report on the online webinar “Protection of groundwater under the Water Framework Directive (WFD): Member States Obligations and recent judgements” that took place on 9th November 2021 as part of an elni webinar. The two speakers were Christoph Sobotta (Legal Secretary at CJEU) and Prof Marleen van Rijswick (Utrecht University). The webinar addressed the protection of groundwater under the WFD and the challenges observed at the Member States level. This report summarises Christoph Sobbota’s presentation on several water-related cases and Prof Ryswick’s presentation on the implementation of EU law in the Member States as illustrated by the protection of groundwater in the Netherlands. Main findings include that negative impact on the environment will still happen and that instead of focusing on a single project a broader approach should be applied.