New report shines light on industry actors attempting to remove EU water protections
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Press Release
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Press Release
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Rivers and Lakes
A new report, “Industry’s role in water resilience: How some lead – and others wreck”, has lifted the lid on how little some of Europe’s most powerful industry groups care about the rules that protect people and nature from one of the biggest threats of our time: pollution and destruction of nature. The findings reveal attempts by parts of the agriculture, energy, mining, and chemical sectors to weaken the EU’s cornerstone water protection law, the Water Framework Directive (WFD), under the guise of “simplification” and “competitiveness.”
Despite depending on clean and abundant water for their own operations, these lobbies are pressuring the European Commission (EC) to use the upcoming Environmental “Omnibus” Package – the EC’s proposal to deregulate (rip up) environmental laws – to roll back fundamental WFD safeguards. Their demands include scrapping the “one-out, all-out” principle, watering down the ban on destroying nature, and postponing the 2027 deadline to restore Europe’s rivers, lakes, and aquifers to good health. All despite the fact that the WFD was given a clean bill of health, declared as “fit for purpose” by the Commission’s own fitness check, only in 2019.
If granted, these changes would open the floodgates to further pollution and nature destruction, threatening not only ecosystems and wildlife, but also vital sources of drinking water – endangering the health of millions of people across Europe, while at the same time undermining the EU’s new Water Resilience Strategy and Europe’s climate goals.
The report shows how industrial agriculture seeks to dodge vitally needed pollution controls, extractive industries want freer permits for new mines, and energy giants are pushing to redefine pollution standards, all while claiming to act in the name of green growth. All in the name of short-term profits.
By contrast, many forward-looking businesses are calling for stronger enforcement of the WFD, recognising that healthy freshwater ecosystems are essential for stability, productivity, and resilience across Europe.
“Industry lobbyists are encircling the Commission, pushing to rip up the whole rule book. They show no concern that their demands could leave us with chemicals in our blood and toxic contamination in the water we swim in – so long as the profits keep on flowing. But caving to them would be a serious mistake. Citizens will pay, progressive companies will pay, and in the end even these industries will pay when short-term deregulation fuels long-term instability, public backlash, and deeper environmental crises of their own making.” The Living Rivers Europe coalition said.
The European Commission now faces a critical choice: stand by citizens and science, or side with short-term polluters.
Read the report
Downloads
Key insights
- Industry groups across sectors call for core WFD principles to be scrapped or weakened.
- Proposals would make it easier for polluting projects to be approved, even if they harm rivers, lakes, and groundwater.
- These rollbacks would directly endanger drinking water quality, biodiversity, and public health.
- Only a small group of lobby actors support weakening the WFD, not the majority of businesses.
- This is based on publicly available answers provided by industry associations or individual companies to the call for evidence on Simplification of administrative burdens in environmental legislation, which ran from 22 July to 10 September 2025.
The report urges the European Commission to:
- Keep the Water Framework Directive out of the Environmental Omnibus Package
- Enforce existing rules, do not review or strip them of meaning
- Fund and strengthen implementation through the Water Resilience Strategy
- Protect citizens’ right to clean, safe, and affordable water
Notes to editor:
- Living Rivers Europe, The EU Water Framework Directive: A modern and powerful tool to provide clean, healthy, flowing waters, https://wwfeu.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/lre-eu-water-framework-directive_web.pdf
- Living Rivers Europe, 13 myths about the Water Framework Directive, https://wwfeu.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/13-myths_2-pager_web.pdf
For more information, please contact:
Amélie Tagu, Communications Officer, Wetlands International Europe, [email protected]