The annual report, published before the start of the summer season, is based on findings of analyses of water samples from over 21,000 coastal and inland bathing places in the 28 EU member-states plus Albania and Switzerland.
Last year, 8 EU member-states had excellent quality of bathing water.
"... more than 90% of bathing water sites were of excellent quality in eight Member States: Luxembourg (all 11 reported bathing water sites), Cyprus (99.1% of bathing water sites), Malta (97.7 %), Greece (97.2%), Croatia (94.2%), Italy (90.5%), Germany (90.3%) and Austria (90.2%)."
"There were 21 582 bathing water sites monitored in Europe in 2015, of which 21 288 were in the 28 EU Member States. Switzerland and Albania also monitored and reported on the quality of their 294 bathing water sites. In 2015, 69% of sites were coastal bathing waters (including transitional waters), while 31% were inland waters (rivers and lakes).
"There has been a marked drop in the proportion of EU bathing water sites that could not be quality assessed, from 5.8% in 2011 to 2.3% in 2015," reads the report.
"In 2015, there were 383 sites with poor quality bathing water in Europe. Italy (95 bathing water sites or 1.7%),
France (95 bathing water sites or 2.8%) and Spain (58 bathing water sites or 2.6%) are the countries with the highest number of poor bathing water sites. In some EU Member States, more than 3% of bathing water sites were of poor quality: 4.9% or 31 sites in the United Kingdom, 4.4% or six sites in Ireland, 3.4% or 24 sites in the Netherlands and 3.2% or three sites in Bulgaria," reads the report.
The share of bathing sites with excellent bathing water in Europe has increased from 78% in 2011 to 84% in 2015.
Karmenu Vella, European Commissioner for the Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, said: "European bathing water is at 96% acceptable and 84% excellent standards. That is the result of 40 years investing in water and waste water infrastructure. It is a sign of EU legislation working well. And it is a perfect testimony to the fact that a highly evolved economic area such as ours can produce equally high environmental standards."