Europeans continue enjoying high-quality waters. All the bathing sites in Cyprus, Luxembourg, and Malta had excellent water quality. These countries were followed by Greece (97%), Croatia (94%) and Germany (90%). Across Europe, just under 2% of bathing sites failed to meet the Bathing Water Directive's minimum standards, the report says. Neighbouring Slovenia, for example, has met the minimum standards.
This year's report assesses bathing water quality in 2014, indicating where the quality of bathing water is expected to be good in 2015. The report was compiled using information from more than 21 000 bathing waters in the 28 EU member states. The report also covers bathing waters in Albania and Switzerland.
The main message of this report is that in 2014 bathing waters in Europe were generally of high quality, with 95% of the bathing water sites meeting minimum water quality standards, as specified in the EU's Bathing Water Directive.
More than 83% of the sites met the more stringent standard of 'excellent' bathing water quality, and less than 2% of bathing waters were rated as having poor bathing water quality.
There are six countries where 90% or more of bathing waters (whether coastal or inland) have reached excellent quality: Croatia, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, and Malta. There are ten countries where all bathing waters are compliant with at least the minimum quality standards: Austria, Cyprus, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
In Europe, there were 409 bathing waters assessed as poor. The three countries with the highest numbers of poor bathing waters are Italy (107 bathing waters or 1.9%), France (105 bathing waters or 3.1%) and Spain (67 bathing waters or 3.1%). The highest rates of bathing waters with poor quality have been found in Estonia (3 bathing waters or 5.6%), Ireland (7 bathing waters or 5.1%), the Netherlands (35 bathing waters or 4.9%), and Sweden (16 bathing waters or 3.6%), the report said.