Since its creation, the European Union (EU) has developed a substantial amount of environmental legislation in the form of directives, regulations and decisions which are applicable to all the Member States. However, mining policy in the EU has been driven mainly by industrial considerations: the energy extractive industry being covered by the Directorate General Transport and Energy (DG TREN) and non-energy by DG Enterprise. For historical and economic reasons mining had been specifically excluded from much of the environmental policy developed by DG Environment. In the aftermath of the Baia Mare accident, the European Commission created a Task Force that proposed a plan of action with ideas for new legislation. They included the amendment of the Seveso II Directive and the production a document on Best Available Techniques (BAT) for the environmental control of mineral processing, similar to those produced under the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive. The main policy development has been a new Directive on the management of waste from the extractive industry, currently under discussion and expected to be approved in 2005. This article reviews the coverage of mine water in European legislation before and after these recent legislative changes from the point of view of the Water Framework Directive. Six critical issues are identified: the need to cover energy and non-energy industries, full life-cycle approach, mine water in the BAT document, mine voids in the mine waste initiative, abandoned mines and the whole catchment approach. The conclusion is that although the new policies constitute a substantial improvement in the regulatory framework of the EU, they address only some of the key issues. In particular, the full life-cycle and catchment approaches have not been sufficiently taken into account by legislators.