Bathing water quality in Europe: how many bathing areas were labelled as ”excellent”

Over 85% of bathing areas monitored on a European level in 2016 were labelled as ”excellent”, according to the annual report regarding bathing water quality, recently published by the European Environmental Agency (EEA). At the same time, 96% of areas met the minimum quality standards established according to the EU regulations.

In the past 40 years, beaches and swimming areas throughout Europe registered a positive trend, with increasingly clean waters.

The report compiles an analysis of water sample taken from over 21,000 bathing areas, both coastal and inland, and offers great clues regarding the likely location of areas with best water quality this summer, according to the EEA and the European Commission.

Just like previous years, most bathing and swimming areas in Europe have very good quality water.

In 2016, 96,3% of bathing areas fulfilled the minimum quality standards (being labelled as ”satisfactory„) established by the EU Directive regarding bathing water, a percentage slightly increased compared to the 96,1% registered in 2015.

Over 85% of bathing areas fulfilled the highest standards regarding water quality that were stated in the Directive, being labelled as ”excellent”, thus being a slight increase compared to 2015, when the percentage was of 84,4%.

According to the document, all bathing areas in Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Romania and Slovenia that were included in the report obtained at least the ”satisfactory” label in 2016.

In 2016, about of the 631 bathing areas in Great Britain, 4111 (65,1%) received the ”excellent” label, 157 924,9% were labeled as ”good”, 41 (6,5%) – „satisfactory”, 20 (3,2%) – „weak”, and two could not be evaluated.

In five countries, at least 95% of bathing waters were evaluated as having an ”excellent” quality: Luxembourg (all 11 areas included in the report), Cyprus (99% of the total number of bathing areas), Malta (99% of the total number of bathing areas), Greece (97% of the total number of bathing areas) and Austria (95% of the total number of bathing areas).

Last year, approximately 1,5% of the total number of bathing areas were classified as having an ”unsatisfactory” water quality.

Between bathing seasons 2015 and 2016, the absolute number of bathing waters classified as ”unsatisfactory” dropped from 383 to 318.

Most locations classified like so were registered in Italy (100 bathing areas and 1,8%, respectively), France (82 areas or 2,4%) and Spain (39 areas, 1,8% respectively).

At the same time, the highest rates of bathing areas with an ”unsatisfactory” water quality were registered in Ireland (4,3%), Great Britain (3,2%) and Slovakia (3%).