Polski
On February 15, the European Commission called on sixteen European countries, including Poland, to complete a review of their water management plans. In addition to us, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain were mentioned. The call was prompted by missed directive deadlines for publishing new plans.
A day later, the Regulation of the Minister of Infrastructure on the Vistula River Basin Management Plan was published and came into force on February 17. So we already have a planning document in effect for about half of our country’s territory. We have written about how important it is not only for water management in previous issues of Water Issues. Reading the document is a real challenge – it contains 46,865 pages. Counting a ream of A4 paper per volume, this gives 94 volumes weighing more than 230 kg. The only convenience, when searching for data of interest, is the ability to generate characterization sheets for water bodies, available here.
What’s next for the violation?
Member states have two months to respond and correct the violations found. In the absence of a satisfactory response, the EC may decide to issue a so-called “letter of formal notice. reasoned opinion, the next step in the infringement procedure.
Worth seeing: the different stages of the infringement procedure (related to the control of the compliance of Member States with EU regulations) are presented on the pages of the EC .
