Abstract
The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is the core legislative instrument in the European Union for the protection of water resources. Adopted in 2000, its objectives were to achieve “good status” for water bodies by 2015 and prevent any further deterioration. However, the European Commission and some stakeholders are rather dissatisfied with the implementation of the Directive so far, in particular with the use of exemptions to the environmental objectives. Exemptions are of paramount importance: they may constitute a significant obstacle to the achievement of the WFD’s objectives as they enable member states to lower the ambition of the Directive and to delay the achievement of good status, thereby undermining the environmental goal of the WFD. Critical voices observe an excessive reliance on exemptions, poor justifications, and great variations in their use. Based on an analysis of 120 policy documents and 15 semi-structured interviews, this article provides explanations for the politics of exemptions in EU water management. It shows that different viewpoints and interpretations on the WFD’s objectives and exemptions were already present in the negotiation phase of the Directive, but remained undefined on purpose. Moreover, dysfunctional decision-making procedures in the Common Implementation Strategy and the lack of political support in WFD implementation were significant obstacles to an agreement on this important issue. Finally, decisions on WFD implementation in member states were often driven by pragmatism. The article explains how the negotiations of the WFD and the EU-level discussion on the implementation of the Directive undermined environmental goals in EU governance; its findings are also relevant for policy fields other than water.
Highlights
The Water Framework Directive (WFD, 2000/60/EC) is the principal legislative instrument for protecting water resources in the EU
The positions held by the Council and the EP hereby did not differ very much from their views about the overall objectives: the Parliament maintained that exemptions should be used in exceptional circumstances only in order to avoid overuse, abuse and patterns that would turn the overall ambition of the Directive on its head
The debate on the right method to assess disproportionality may reflect a deeper political conflict: while some countries and the Commission strongly support the use of economic tools and principles for environmental protection, other member states were more concerned with the distribution of costs to other stakeholders and social consequences
Summary
The Water Framework Directive (WFD, 2000/60/EC) is the principal legislative instrument for protecting water resources in the EU. Another strand of research takes the insight that “objective criteria” for the use of exemptions are missing in the WFD [25] as a starting point and combines case studies with normative considerations, providing interpretations, justifications and guidance, often with reference to the concept of “disproportionality” This concept describes the possibility that the monetary costs of achieving a good ecological status may be disproportionately high when compared to the economic and social benefits [26,27]. This article seeks to trace the EU level debate on exemptions in WFD water planning since the beginning of negotiations to the present day, with a particular focus on disproportionality as a possible justification, in order to understand the critiques made on their use by member states. To find an agreement may explain why member states use exemptions extensively and justify them poorly, resulting in the chequered pattern heavily criticised by the Commission
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