Participatory river basin management under the EU Water Framework Directive: A comparative assessment of policy implementation in 13 member states

With its ratification in 2000, the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) has sought to transform the water management routines of EU member states within a harmonised European water management regime. The main governance principles on which this regime is built are the management of waters according on the scale of hydrogeographical river basin districts, as well as the inclusion of affected stakeholders in the planning process.
As the first cycle of river basin management planning is now complete, an evaluation on how WFD principles have been applied in reality seems timely. In this contribution, we analyse how the WFD impacted on water management practices in 13 member states across Europe, with particular regard to the two key principles of river basin management and public participation. We conducted a detailed analysis of primary and secondary literature on WFD implementation and water management planning. On this basis we developed a set of theoretically informed indicators to map the transformations that occurred in each country, and then classified these in a cluster analysis according to their river basin management systems. For a deeper understanding of the characteristics of these clusters we did an in-depth case study analysis for one country from each group, where transformations in water management practices induced by the WFD were redrawn and analysed in more detail. The paper concludes with a summary of our findings and an assessment of the extent to which the WFD has so far led to a harmonisation of water management practices across the EU.