Environmental Law Lecture series

Welcome to the Environmental Law Lecture Series! In this series, environmental law scholars will provide important insights into how EU environmental law helps to achieve a high level of environmental protection in the European Union and beyond.

Designing the Future of European Water Law: 

Towards a European Blue Deal?

Almost 5 decades after the first UN Water Conference held in 1977, the crucial issue of water seems to be back on the agenda. The UN Water Agenda 2023 brings together various voluntary commitments from stakeholders, including those of the EU. Moreover, the European Green Deal is presented as a “unique opportunity... to secure a water-resilient future”. However, in 2023, the European Economic and Social Committee called for a European Blue Pact. A recent European Citizens' Initiative for an Intelligent and Resilient Water Europe is part of this dynamic. The availability of water in sufficient quality and quantity, not to mention our water footprint, is clearly at stake. What's more, climate change is exacerbating episodes of water stress and the intensity of floods, which are major sources of insecurity. These emergencies challenge the way we use and share water resources, including in Europe. Despite the EU's extensive legal framework on water, the question of new hierarchies for the water needs of people and natural entities must be asked, without harming or excluding anyone.

Watch it here on YouTube if you'd like to access the video transcript or jump chapters.

Key Themes

• Persistent implementation gap and new political momentum: Despite the Water Framework Directive’s ambitious goals, only around 40% of EU surface waters are in good ecological status, and many Member States will miss the final 2027 deadline. This failure has triggered renewed political attention and calls for a Blue Deal, including a forthcoming European Water Resilience Initiative (expected mid-2025).
• Water values; from economic resource to living ecosystem: How we legally govern water depends on how we value it – as a commodity, a public/common good, or an ecosystem. While the WFD recognises water as “not a commercial product like any other”, current EU law still largely follows utilitarian and market-based approaches.
• Complexity and interconnections demand systemic regulation: Water cycles link surface and groundwater, rivers, coasts, soils and biodiversity. Climate change deepens pressures (droughts, salinisation, glacier loss). EU law has begun to address this through the WFD’s river-basin approach, but it remains too fragmented and static.
• The WFD as a paradigm shift – but limited by exemptions: The 2000 WFD shifted EU law towards river basin management, ecological status and public participation. However quantitative water issues remain marginal, and Member States have relied heavily on exemptions and deadline extensions, undermining effectiveness.
• Towards a Water Resilience Initiative – opportunities and risks
  • A new EU strategy could:
    • mainstream water across policies (nexus approach)
    • strengthen restoration and the human right to water
    • improve financing and data
  • But risks include:
    • focus on water efficiency over ecosystem protection
    • treating water as an economic resource rather than a common good
    • further weakening the WFD through ‘modernisation’
    • insufficient democratic and ecological participation.

Speaker 

Nathalie Hervé-Fournereau

Nathalie Hervé-Fournereau, Western Institute of Law and Europe (IODE) Mixed Research Unit CNRS-Rennes University. Her research focuses on European environmental law, in particular the pluralism of modes of regulation and the integration of environmental requirements into European policies. I analyse the dynamics of the transformation of European environmental law in the light of innovative expressions of democracy and justice. Involved in interdisciplinary research, I also study the interactions between law and scientific knowledge in the field of water and biodiversity and examine the migration into law of hybrid concepts such as ecosystem services, nature-based solutions and planetary limits. I am a member of the French Society for Environmental Law (vice-president 2014-2020), the European Association of Environmental Lawyers (Avosetta Group) and the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law (co-chair of the research committee 2014-2017).

Lecture Series

This lecture is part of a series that runs from 2023 to 2025, providing students and scholars with core insights into the current state of EU environmental law and how it can be improved to achieve greater environmental protection. All lectures will be recorded and made accessible through YouTube, and the series is freely accessible to all.

If you'd like to know more about the other upcoming lectures:

visit our Events page

This GreenDeal-Net lecture serie is hosted by MCEL, METRO and organised in cooperation with GLaw-Net and GreenDeal-NET. Maastricht University students will be eligible for certificates of attendance (see more information under the registration link).