Water resources across Europe — confronting water stress: an updated assessment

This report aims to update knowledge of water stress (a general term that includes drought and water scarcity) in Europe to inform policymakers and interested stakeholders about the current state of play. It presents arguments for a shift from crisis management to risk management, including by putting more emphasis on demand-side measures, such as increasing water use efficiency or organising information campaigns. In order to minimise the impacts of water stress on people and ecosystems across Europe, ecosystem resilience needs to be improved, and the water use efficiency of our socio‑economic systems needs to be increased. For both of these issues policies and regulations at EU level are in place, but their implementation and effectiveness need to be improved. As pointed out in The European environment — state and outlook 2020 (SOER 2020) (EEA, 2019j), there are many indications that the environment in Europe has reached the point at which, because of the long-term overexploitation of natural resources, relatively small changes in external conditions can provoke considerable and irreversible changes in environmental quality and the supply of natural resources. These would in turn lead to permanent negative impacts on nature, the quality of life and the economy and other associated systems, which would all be difficult and very costly to reverse.