All official European Union website addresses are in the europa.eu domain.
See all EU institutions and bodies
An official website of the European Union | How do you know?
Environmental information systems
WISE-Freshwater is a gateway for searching, accessing, retrieving and understanding data and information on the environmental status and policy assessments of European freshwaters (surface - and groundwaters).
Water is a crucial resource for humanity and essential to generate and sustain economic and social prosperity. It is also at the core of natural ecosystems and climate regulation.
The biodiversity of Europe’s waters and wetlands and Europe's water resources remain under pressure from nutrients and hazardous substances pollution, over-abstraction of water, and physical changes to the environment. At the same time our climate is changeing, with both droughts and floods becoming more extreme.
WISE-Freshwater provides information on European legislation that aim to protect different aspects of the freshwater environment. It also provides data and analysis stemming from this legislation and documents the progress made towards environmental targets.
WISE-Freshwater is a partnership between the European Commission Directorate-General for Environment (DG ENV) and the European Environment Agency (EEA).
The European Topic Centre on Inland, Coastal and Marine waters (ETC/ICM) has contributed to the preparation of the content.