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EUROPE - REGIONAL
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The News N° 25
The consortium, formedby International
Office forWater (France-leader partner),
the National Institute of Hydrology and
Water Management (Romania) and the
Mediterranean Network of Basin Orga-
nizations Secretariat (Spain), was selec-
ted by the DG Environment of the Euro-
peanCommission inSeptember 2014 for
setting up the Peer-ReviewMechanism,
and taking care of its secretariat for the
next 2 years.
The objective is to set up a simple, voluntary
and targeted system to allowmutual learning
between peers about WFD implementation
and participative river basin management
planning.
Themainpeople involvedwill bepractitioners
from River Basin District Authorities responsi-
ble for the implementationof theWFD, which
will voluntarily submit issues related to River
Basin Management Plans to the review per-
formed by experts from otherMember States.
The final output of this newmechanism
is the improvement of the WFD imple-
mentation in River Basin Districts (RBD)
by sharing experience involving various
EuropeanMember States.
It responds to the assessment of River Basin
Management Plans made by the European
Commission across Europe that has shown
significant differences in implementation
among countries.
The impact assessment, accompanying the
Blueprint, states that Peer Review (…) has
proven to be an effective process in other
areas of EU law.
The sharing of experience between
colleagues allows for a problem-solving
approach tobe taken.
Under the Common Implementation Strategy
(CIS), the peer review mechanism allows
disseminating the experience of the best per-
forming countries to help improving imple-
mentation inMember States or BasinAuthori-
tieswilling to be reviewed.
The steps of the settingupof
aPeer-Review
Mechanism
are as follows:
Step 1:
Launching of the call for expres-
sionof interest fromearly2015
for, on the
one side, the identificationof theBasinDistrict
Authorities willing to have their tools revie-
wed and, on the other side, voluntary practi-
tionerswilling to contribute to thepeer review
based on their Europass CurriculumVitae and
competence field.
Step 2:
Development of terms of refe-
rences
for the proposed actions in the selec-
ted voluntary Districts.
Step3:
First peer-reviewsperformed
and
organizationof apracticalworkshopon speci-
fic topics in spring 2015.
Step 4:
Continuation of Peer-Reviews
until 2016
and elaboration of lessons learnt
documents
All materials related to the Peer Review
Mechanism can be found on the project
website:
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Water Framework Directive
New Peer-ReviewMechanism
DGEnvironment
Eurostat
Improving
European water
statistics!
In the European Union, the collection of
data onwater abstractions and uses, was-
tewater discharges and treatment goes
through the national statistical institutes of
theMember States that provide such infor-
mation to
Eurostat,
the statistical service
of the EuropeanCommission.
Toprovide figures aggregated at the natio-
nal level, these statistical institutes collect
the necessary information from different
services and economic stakeholders and
process these data.
Most often responsible for a variety of
topics, ranging from demographic or
expenditure statistics to accounts of the
nation; these institutes are confrontedwith
rather detailed technical and thematic
information, new for them in the water
sector.
To help their statisticians to better unders-
tand the key concepts and rules of data
aggregation and thereby improve the qua-
lityof thesedata,
Eurostat
proposes dedi-
cated training by sectoral specialists.
In this context, IOWater received
14 statisticians from 8 nationalities
for threedays, from4 to6 June2014.
On this occasion, in Paris area, the group
was received by the director of the SIAAP
Downstream Seine Treatment Plant for a
3-hour field visit that impressedall thepar-
ticipants.
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