Over 80% of Europe’s bathing waters met excellent water quality standards

Jul 05 2022

Over 80% of Europe’s bathing waters met excellent water quality standards

On June 3rd, the European Environment Agency (EEA) published theBathing Water reportshowing that in 2020 almost 83% of Europe’s bathing water sites met the European Union’s most stringent ‘excellent’ water quality standards.

The latest assessment, put together in cooperation with the European Commission, is based on the 2020 monitoring of 22,276 bathing sites across Europe. These cover the EU Member States, Albania and Switzerland throughout 2020.

The share of ‘excellent’ coastal and inland swimming sites has stabilised in recent years at around 85% and in 2020 was 82.8% across Europe. The minimum ‘sufficient’ water quality standards were met at 93% of the sites monitored in 2020, and in five countries – Cyprus, Austria, Greece, Malta and Croatia – 95 % or more bathing waters were of excellent quality.