The European Environment Agency (EEA) has the mandate to provide timely, targeted, relevant and reliable information to allow policy makers in the European Union (EU)and the countries, stakeholders in water management and the general public to judge the effectiveness of policy and the needs for policy development.

Monitoring of quality status and emissions for Europe's waters forms a backbone in this process. Reporting from countries to European institutions takes place in the context of the Water Information System for Europe (WISE) to be seen as implementation of the Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) based on cooperation in the so-called Group of Four (Go4) institutions: DG Environment, Eurostat and Joint Research Centre (JRC) and EEA.

The presentation will describe the electronic reporting via Reportnet including automated as well as manual QA process leading to generation of indicators and other publicly available products, such as interactive maps and downloadable datasets.

Water quality parameters include organic matter, nutrients and hazardous substances - with a high diversity on data coverage - and more recent, classifications of ecological and chemical status of water bodies in the context of the Water Framework Directive.

Water quality data are stored in Waterbase and at the end of 2010 Waterbase contained,e.g., water quality information on about 9300 river stations and 3200 lake stations. Data on bathing water quality at more than 21 000 European beaches and information on about 24 000 urban waste water treatment plants are also stored in Waterbase.

Some data flows via EU directives, Eionet framework, Eurostat water statistics have partial overlaps, which is recognised and intended to streamline. Challenges in terms of aggregation levels, comparability of basic parameters and reporting obligations and practices will be addressed.

Also issues of an integration of data analyses into water statistics, e.g. ways of including gaps in data coverage via estimations will be addressed for discussion.

Keywords: Water quality; Emissions to water; Water statistics; Reporting streamlining

Biography: Bo Jacobsen is Project Manager in the Water Group at the European Environment Agency (EEA), where he coordinates the content of the EEA part of the Water Information System for Europe (WISE).

Bo is charing the WISE Technical Group, where water aspects at the European level are discussed within the so-called Group-of-Four of European institutions: European Commission DG Environment, Eurostat, Joint Research Centre and EEA and with specialists from EU Member States.