While scoring excellently, bathing water sites in Malta fell 4.6% short of the exceptional mark – 100% – which was reached by Cyprus in the annual Bathing Water Report of 2010, issued by the European Environment Agency and the European Commission.
Croatia followed Cyprus with 97.3% of its bathing water areas meeting strict guide values, while Malta came third with 95.4%, also reaching the excellence mark. In fact, our water quality improved from 93.1% in 2009.
Greece and Ireland followed with 94.2% and 90.1% scores respectively.
Meanwhile, all bathing waters in Malta as well as Cyprus, Greece, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Estonia, Romania and Montenegro complied with mandatory quality values.
In a joint press release announcing the results yesterday, the EC and the agency said results compare well with those of the year before although the quality of bathing water across Europe declined slightly. The overall quality is still high and more than nine out of 10 bathing water sites now meet the minimum requirements.
The survey compared water quality in more than 21,000 coastal and inland bathing sites across the EU27 and candidate nations. Consequently, the report provides a comprehensive overview of the bathing water quality in EU member states throughout the 2010 bathing season, so swimmers can find areas where water quality is expected to be good during 2011.
It also shows trends in bathing water quality since 1990.
By means of a separate exercise, the European Commission has meanwhile given 10 member states, including Malta, two months to transpose EU rules laying down criminal penalties against sea pollution and other environmental offences. Directive 2008/99/EC on criminal law measures to protect the environment should have been introduced in national law by 26 December 2010. However, 10 countries (Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia) have so far failed to do so.
Meanwhile, eight states (Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia) have failed to comply with separate rules on pollution from ships. This directive (2009/123/EC) was due to be implemented by 16 November 2010.
Should the member states concerned fail to notify the Commission of implementation measures within two months, the cases may be referred to the European Court of Justice.
Malta, the smallest European island state, is the second country with the most reported bathing waters in Europe per million inhabitants. In this regard, Malta comes closely behind Denmark with both countries registering over 200 beaches per million inhabitants.
In total, three bathing spots in Malta were polluted for a short-term last year.
Closed bathing waters were reported by 11 countries for the 2009 season and 14 countries for the 2010 bathing season. The closure problem was far lower in 2010 than in 2009, with only 150 bating waters closed (0.7% of the total number). The largest improvement occurred in Italy, where 583 bathing waters closed in 2009 but only 38 in 2010. However, it still had the largest number of closed spots.
The online interactive information tool on bathing water quality will allow you to find out how clean the bathing water is near you or your summer location. It is available on: http://www.eea.europa.eu/
themes/water/status-and-monitoring/state-of-bathing-water.