Starting point

Article 11 (3) l WFD defines the minimum requirements for the programmes of measures to achieve the environmental objectives defined in Article 4. Paragraph (3) l requires measures to prevent significant losses of pollutants from technical installations and to prevent and reduce the impact of accidental pollution incidents, including unforeseeable accidents which have already occurred. Such measures are also to make use of systems to detect or give warning of such events.

Problems

Even if we assume that the basic legal process of transposing the provisions of the WFD into the national law of the Member States has been completed, there are nevertheless a number of specific questions that arise in connection with the practical implementation of Article 11 (3) l WFD. This report addresses some of these questions:

•           A number of other provisions of relevant Community law which have a primary or secondary focus on measures for installation-related water conservation or for protection against other harmful events relating to bodies of water were expressly included in the list of basic measures for compliance with the environmental objectives of the Water Frame-work Directive. This means that obligations under other existing Community provisions may be appropriate measures within the meaning of the Water Framework Directive. However, it is not clear whether measures under these provisions are adequate for the purposes of Article 11 (3) l WFD.

•           It can be shown that even relatively small installations which do not – or at least not clearly – belong to the regulatory scope of existing Community legislation on installation-related water conservation may entail considerable risks to bodies of water. In this connection, separate provisions for installation-related water conservation have been enacted in Germany and elsewhere, the essentials of which have found their way into various agreements, programmes or guidelines of international river basin commissions. Here too, however, there is a need to investigate whether adequate protection pursuant to Article 11 (3) l WFD is ensured or what, if any, supplementary measures are necessary.

•           The definition of the objectives of the WFD is based on an immission-oriented approach. By contrast, the assessment of water pollution in installation-related water body conservation is geared to emission-oriented criteria. To what extent are these concepts compatible with the objectives of the WFD?

•           Are the International Warning and Alarm Plans of the river basin associations adequately equipped to provide the required systems for timely detection and early warning?

•           Can the cost-effectiveness and proportionality considerations demanded by the WFD also be applied to the field of precautions against events that are very rare or may not even occur at all?

Action concept

On the basis of an inventory of past and planned activities in the international river basin commissions for the Elbe, Oder, Danube and Rhine, and an assessment of the technical and organisational aspects investigated, an action concept has been drawn up for implementing the requirements of Article 11 (3) l of the Water Framework Directive.

Proposed measures were drawn up on the basis of a risk management flow chart for the surface waters path (“safety chain”). The safety chain for a possible event is based on a chronological causal flow chart, from strategic precautions through damage containment to after-care measures. It has been broken down into six more differentiated action levels with the aim of identifying individual measures relevant to Article 11 (3) l WFD. These suggested measures are allocated in tabular form to the categories of the safety chain.

Whereas in principle the differentiated scheme of the safety chain claims to cover all essential risk management action fields in the surface waters path, this is expressly not true of the suggested measures. These should only name measures that can be deduced (solely) from Article 11 (3) l WFD. The proposed catalogue of measures should be seen as a “checklist” for determining the need to include measures in the management plan for the relevant river basin pursuant to Article 11 (3) l WFD.

It was not possible to list the necessary measures in the form of rankings, because the degree of implementation and the areas already implemented in the various river basins, Member States, regions etc. display extremely wide variations and cannot be determined in detail from outside. In fact, all the measures mentioned in the concept are equally necessary. Analysing what still needs to be done in each individual region, federal Land, Member State etc. and with what priority, is something only the relevant administrative unit can do for itself. The WFD does not provide any instructions, and it is not possible to make any justified recommendations about the order in which, for example, early warning systems are to be set up and the risk analysis of potential safety hazards is to be performed. However, all measures pursuant to Article 11 (3) WFD are “basic” and represent “minimum requirements”. Thus if scrutiny of the catalogue of measures reveals a need for action, measures must follow.