Water resources across Europe — Confronting water stress: An updated assessment
About this book
The European Environment Agency's report Water Resources across Europe — Confronting Water Stress: An Updated Assessment provides a comprehensive evaluation of water availability, demand, and stress across the European continent, drawing on monitoring data from EU member states, candidate countries, and EEA partner nations. This updated assessment comes against a backdrop of intensifying climate change impacts, with the summer of 2022 registering record-breaking heat and drought conditions across southern and central Europe, underscoring the urgency of the report's findings. The publication begins with a hydrological overview, characterising the spatial distribution of annual precipitation, evapotranspiration, and river basin runoff coefficients across Europe.
It maps the contrast between water-abundant northern and western regions (Scandinavia, Scotland, the Alps) and chronically stressed southern and eastern areas (the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, southern Greece, and the Danube basin), noting that Mediterranean Europe is experiencing a long-term drying trend of 0.5–2% per decade in annual precipitation. Water stress is quantified using the Water Exploitation Index Plus (WEI+), which expresses average annual freshwater abstraction as a percentage of renewable freshwater resources. Countries or river basins exceeding 20% WEI+ are classified as experiencing water stress; those above 40% are severely stressed.
The report identifies significant portions of Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Cyprus as chronically exceeding this threshold, while also highlighting seasonal stress in areas such as England and Belgium where groundwater-dependent public water supply systems are under pressure during dry summers. Sectoral water use patterns are analysed in depth. Agriculture accounts for approximately 40% of total European water abstractions, reaching over 70% in southern member states.
The report evaluates the effectiveness of EU agri-environment measures, irrigation efficiency programmes, and the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in incentivising less water-intensive crop choices and drip irrigation adoption. Urban water supply and demand management are examined through case studies of water utilities that have successfully reduced per-capita consumption through smart metering, leakage reduction, and public awareness campaigns. The report also addresses industrial water use — particularly cooling water for thermoelectric power plants — and the interactions between water and energy systems in the context of the energy transition.
A dedicated chapter on groundwater examines depletion rates in major European aquifers, the recovery of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) river basin plans, and the growing use of managed aquifer recharge (MAR) and treated wastewater reuse as supplementary resources. The report concludes with policy recommendations centred on integrated river basin management, cross-border cooperation, and the embedding of water scarcity considerations into climate adaptation plans, spatial planning, and infrastructure investment decisions.