BackPromoting Water Recycling: From Brussels to the Member States
Project WaterMan’s second Policy Roundtable marked a strategic shift: from focusing on revising the EU Water Reuse Regulation to using the new Water Resilience Strategy and its funding to promote water recycling in the Baltic Sea Region. In the Interreg Baltic Sea Region funded project WaterMan, public authorities and water companies model strategies to reuse water and recirculate retained water, e.g. for industry and agriculture.
The first Roundtable in Brussels in January 2025 had brought together WaterMan partners and representatives of the European Commission to discuss how humid areas like the Baltic Sea Region could be better reflected in future EU water recycling policies. So far, the framework has largely been shaped by the semi-arid south of Europe, with a focus on reusing treated municipal wastewater for agricultural irrigation. The November meeting was therefore meant to explore how the evaluation and revision of the EU Water Reuse Regulation (2020/741) in 2028 could be used to broaden its scope to additional sources and use cases that matter in the Baltic Sea Region.
Wherever drinking water quality is not required, different levels of fit-for-purpose water should be used to stabilise local supply. In the humid north, climate change is bringing more frequent local heatwaves with temporary water shortages as well as increasingly extreme rainfall. Rainwater recycling therefore plays a key role as an additional source of water, and the main use cases may differ: irrigation of urban green spaces, process water in industry or cleaning of sewer networks. Ten pilot measures carried out by WaterMan have shown that much of this can already be achieved today. For broader application and adoption, what is still missing are legally robust definitions of these different quality levels across different sources of recycled water – ideally as part of a revised EU Water Reuse Regulation.
Politics in motion – making use of opportunities
In Brussels, Loïc Charpentier, Head of Advocacy at Water Europe, pointed to recent political developments and the opportunities they create. The planned recast of the EU Water Reuse Regulation, still scheduled for 2028, is not yet a central focus of political debate. Instead, the new EU Water Resilience Strategy, adopted in June 2025, is moving to centre stage. It sends a clear signal that water scarcity is now an issue for all of Europe, including humid regions, and identifies water recycling as a key instrument for stabilising water supply. Moreover, the dialogue on its implementation is directly linked to negotiations on the EU’s seven-year financial framework, where substantial funding is being made available.
Turning the focus from Brussels to the Member States
In strategic terms, this means that efforts to promote water recycling in the Baltic Sea Region now need to shift: away from discussions on quality standards in Brussels and towards the Member States, which – according to the Commission’s proposals – will in future have more scope to manage EU funds themselves.
WaterMan Lead Partner Tobias Facchini from Region Kalmar County is optimistic: “Based on the pilots and local model strategies developed, we can convince national authorities of the potential of a Baltic Sea Region-specific approach to water recycling, making an important contribution to securing sufficient volumes and strengthening the EU’s water resilience.” At EU level, WaterMan has pushed the issue as far as is realistically possible for now. From here, the political focus needs to shift to the national and regional level: spread the word, engage the relevant decision-makers and get things moving on the ground – hands-on and local. As Facchini puts it, “the EUSBSR is an important framework for this, and the close cooperation with Policy Area Nutri has been, and remains, extremely valuable.” Building on this support, the joint task now is to convince national governments in the BSR to secure EU funding to turn pilots and local model strategies for water recycling into wider practice.
“The EUSBSR is an important framework for shifting the political focus to the national and regional level, and the close cooperation with Policy Area Nutri has been, and remains, extremely valuable.
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