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Published in:
2008 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Standards and Thresholds of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) — Phytoplankton and Lakes
Authors : Brigitte Nixdorf, Atis Rektins, Ute Mischke
Published in: Standards and Thresholds for Impact Assessment
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
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Water protection policy of the European Union (EU) dates back to 1970s, especially to Paris Summit in 1972, where commitment was made to introduce common EU wide environmental policy that included protection of water resources (European Parliament 1972). Since then, several water quality acts have been passed, mostly regulating water pollution. As environmental issues took more important place in the political agenda and EU water policy was rather fragmented, consisting of many complex individual and fragmented regulations, the European Commission (EC) stressed out the need for an integrated approach to water resources covering both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the policy, management of both surface water and groundwater, environmental protection and the links with other policies (EC 1994). The Water Framework Directive (WFD), proposed in 1994, was finally adopted in 2000. It applies to all water in the natural environment - rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters as well as groundwater.