European Commission urges Poland to review water permits

The European Commission urges Poland to review water permits. The Commission started an infringement procedure by sending a letter of formal notice to Poland for failing to correctly transpose the Water Framework Directive (WFD), including the obligation to carry out periodic reviews of water permits. Poland now has two months to respond and address the shortcomings raised by the European Commission. In the absence of a satisfactory response, the Commission may decide to issue a reasoned opinion.

The Water Framework Directive requires Member States to establish a programme of measures for each river basin district to ensure good status of European water bodies, such as rivers and lakes. Each programme must include measures to control different types of pressures affecting water bodies, such as water abstraction, impoundment, point source discharges and diffuse pollution sources.

More Member States in the dock

Member States are required to periodically review these control measures, including any permits granted, to determine whether they still achieve their objectives and, if necessary, update them. According to the European Commission the obligation to periodically review water abstractions is incorrectly transposed into Polish law, as it does not cover all permitted activities. There is also no explicit obligation for the competent authorities to update the reviewed permits when there is a risk that the environmental objectives will not be achieved. The European Commission is stepping up its monitoring of existing water law implementation. The Commission has already started similar infringement procedures against Belgium, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Austria, Slovenia and Finland.

Poland taken to court over water law implementation DWD

This summer the European Commission referred Poland to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for failing to transpose the recast Drinking Water Directive (DWD) into national law. The European Commission issued a formal notice to Poland in March 2023 for not adopting and communicating the necessary national measures and decided to refer the Member State court in June because Poland did not make sufficient progress with the implementation of the new law.