In June 2025, the European Commission officially launched its long-anticipated Water Resilience Strategy, a cornerstone policy designed to confront the accelerating degradation of water systems across the European Union. The announcement follows the October 2024 publication of a critical report by the European Environment Agency (EEA), which provided a complete assessment of Europe’s rivers, lakes, coastal waters, and groundwater reserves.
According to the EEA, Europe is facing a water crisis of systemic proportions. Droughts and floods are becoming more frequent and more severe, driven by climate change and compounded by decades of unsustainable water management and human-induced pressures. Today, around 30% of EU citizens experience water stress every year, while the economic damages of water-related disasters exceeded €480 billion in 2024 alone. Beyond these staggering costs lies the immeasurable social toll: from disruptions in basic services to the tragic loss of human lives.
In response, the Commission has outlined a strategic vision built around three pillars:
- Restoring the water cycle
- Building a water-smart economy
- Ensuring access to clean and affordable water
Restoring the water cycle: from legislation to implementation
At the core of the strategy lies a reaffirmation of existing legal instruments, namely the Water Framework Directive (WFD), the Floods Directive, and the Nature Restoration Law. Instead of introducing new legislation, the Commission is calling for rigorous and harmonised enforcement of existing rules. This approach fully reflects the ongoing simplification effort the Commission is carrying over in multiple fields, trying to ease the burden on European businesses while ensuring a swift and effective implementation of the existing legislation.
Indeed, a significant implementation gap persists across Member States, with uneven application of obligations undermining both environmental objectives and the integrity of the Single Market, as pointed out by the Letta Report. This failure to implement has already led to legal action. Most notably, early in June the European Court of Justice’s condemned Greece for failing to update its flood risk management plans.
To address these gaps, the Commission is proposing to increase the enforcement efforts based on its latest review of River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs) and Flood Risk Management Plans (FRMPs), published in February 2025.
On the Water Framework Directive, the Commission had indeed warned that while Member States have generally improved knowledge and monitoring of surface and groundwater bodies, increased spending, and improved application of EU water-related legislation, still significant work is needed to meet EU targets on freshwater quality and quantity. Concretely, the Commission is now calling on Member States to adhere to the pollution targets on water, as this has a confirmed negative impact on human and animal health.
The emphasis is therefore on reducing pollution from persistent chemicals like PFAS, as well as from microplastics, in line with the Zero Pollution Action Plan. In this context, SMEs working on advanced water treatment solutions will play a critical role, not only as innovators but as key actors in the EU’s strategic autonomy in water technology, a sector where Europe currently holds 40% of global patents.
Combining natural and engineered solutions
The Strategy also addresses the urgent issues of extreme water-related events. While strongly encouraging and incentivising the full exploitation of the natural retention systems and reservoirs, including the deployment of nature-based solutions, the Strategy boldly recommends also to take fully into account man-made structures, such as dykes, dams and other smart infrastructure that can help, in combination with nature-based solutions, to tackle the unavoidable and severe consequences of these more frequent extreme weather events.
This is a significant step forward that the Strategy is making in acknowledging that a combination of nature-based and man-made infrastructures can work and that they shouldn’t be seen as competitors but as cohabitating and cooperating systems. While it is indeed clear that while the use of nature-based solutions is preferable in extra-urban areas, in the great inhabited centres there could be no other option than the adoption of man-made and self-activating structures to prevent damages.
As the one-size-fits-all approach has been recognised not to be efficient by the Commission, the full involvement of the local and regional communities in the next steps and the drafting of the national Climate Adaptation Plans will be central. Local communities should therefore play a key role in drafting and implementing the plan. It will be up to the EU and Member States to oversee and encourage their effective enforcement, in addition to granting money and securing investments, notablyfrom the private sector.
A water-smart economy: closing the consumption loop
The second pillar of the strategy envisions a structural transformation of Europe’s water economy. At its heart is a commitment to reduce demand and increase circularity, through water reuse, recycling, and high-efficiency technologies.
The Commission proposes a “Water Efficiency First” principle—inspired by the “Energy Efficiency First” doctrine—aimed at embedding water-saving measures across all sectors. A new EU-wide target of a 10% increase in water efficiency by 2030 has been set. While the methodology for implementation remains under discussion, the Commission has signalled that differentiated territorial needs will be taken into account.
What is clear is that the EU will now prioritise investment in water management smart technologies. This includes infrastructure for wastewater treatment, purification, and smart monitoring, as well as incentives for the agriculture, industry, and energy sectors, which still consume water at unsustainable levels. For this to happen, as water has a reasonably limited cost, the European Union will have to channel a huge amount of investment to make a business case for industries operating in the field.
For this reason, the Water Resilience Strategy is again a bold and forward-looking step and will unlock the potential of EU innovation also in this field, by allowing industries to further invest and make recycled and reused water cheaper and cheaper, especially for the industrial, energy and agricultural sectors, where the consumption of water is still above the fixed consumption targets.
In the field of agriculture, it will be interesting to see how the Bioeconomy Strategy, which is due to be presented by the Commission by the end of the year, will help promoting and incentivising the agritech innovation products and innovative farming practices that could help tackling water consumption in agriculture. It’s not by chance that the Agricultural Committee in the European Parliament has been really vocal on the preparation of the Strategy.
Securing clean and affordable water for all
The third goal the Strategy aims to achieve, is securing clean and affordable water. , Tthe main recommendation from the Commission is to empower consumers through a labelling and other well-established systems such as the Ecodesign for Sustainable Product Regulation (ESPR) to help them to reduce water consumption by choosing less polluting, more water-efficient products.
Additionally, the Strategy proposes water pricing policies based on actual use, environmental impact and capacity to pay as essential means to ensure access to water while creating the right incentives for consumers and other users. This will help significantly to increase awareness and limit the use and the waste of water.
Financing water resilience
Ambition alone is not enough, what Europe now needs is unprecedented investment, but where to find them will be the real challenge.
While a good first significant step was done by the European Commission on the occasion of the midterm review of the Cohesion Policy, by advising Member States to spend the remaining funds until 2027 on key 5 priority areas including water resilience, the path to achieve the final goals is still long and would require a significantly bigger amount of investments.
According to the strategy, the EU faces a €23 billion annual investment gap just to meet existing water legislation targets. Addressing this will require bold action in the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). The Commission also highlights the role of the BlueInvest platform and the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) to support the development of innovative water technologies.
But, if the next MFF might face multiple pressures and the risk of being subject to an overstretching due to too many priorities and too little funds, the Strategy suggests a bold alternative to fund the transition to a water-smart society: increase and bolster the role of the European Investment Bank (EIB) in the water sector. This enhanced cooperation and the major involvement of the EIB will aim to step up public and private investments in the area of water, both in the EU and globally.
With more than €86 billion invested in water and sanitation since the 1960s, the European Investment Bank is the world’s largest investor in the sector. As of today, it has supported more than 1,770 projects. While its first interventions focused mainly on the construction and modernization of drinking water and sanitation infrastructure, its scope of action has gradually broadened and flood management, erosion prevention, innovative technologies and river restoration are now among its top priorities.
Thus, to further contribute to this scope, the EIB Group has developed a Water Programme to support the Commission’s Water Resilience Strategy with over EUR 15 billion in planned financing during 2025–2027 for projects enhancing access to water, pollution control, resilience and competitiveness of the EU water sector, including through large infrastructures and nature-based solutions.
Additionally, the Commission and EIB will join forces to address bottlenecks for deploying water investments. This will include the proposal of a new Sustainable Water Advisory Facility to finance EIB technical assistance in building the pipeline of projects as well as better quantifying funding needs and options to facilitate water investment. The main aim of the involvement of the EIB is to attract more private capital by de-risking the investment in the water sector, also through innovative methods such as the emission of Green and Blue bonds.
For these reasons, now is the time for European SMEs leading in water management and water treatment to make their voices heard at the EU level. They must engage with the relevant stakeholders to fully seize the opportunities presented by the new Water Resilience Strategy and the funding it will provide. As Europe is home to some of the world’s most innovative technologies in water management, this is a unique chance for SMEs at the forefront of the sector to further grow, contribute to Europe’s broader goals, and establish themselves as champions in the field, exporting both their expertise and technology globally.
The ultimate goal of the strategy is not limited to increasing access to finance and investment funds for companies developing advanced water management and treatment technologies. It also aims to enable these companies to scale up and expand within the internal market by removing existing implementation and bureaucratic barriers that hinder their growth.
In this context, it will be crucial for companies to engage in a strategic public affairs effort that goes beyond merely influencing the EU legislative process. Public affairs in Brussels should also be viewed as a gateway to opening new markets and channels in EU Member States. Presenting their technologies and innovations to the Permanent Representations of Member States will not only help secure their support in shaping legislation but also offer them opportunities to discover and invest in new technologies for application in their home countries. Additionally, this outreach can facilitate matchmaking processes with other national stakeholders who could benefit from cooperation with innovative companies. Only by undertaking such comprehensive efforts can Europe truly deliver on the priority areas defined for this mandate, water being no exception.
As a boutique public affairs consultancy, at Lykke Advice we can help your company navigating the EU landscape with tailored support, including getting visibility, creating market access using the Brussels channel and shaping the legislation that highly influence the water sector and will affect your company.
Want to learn more about our service and how your company can benefit from hiring a public affairs consultancy in Brussels? Reach out to us at info@lykkeadvice.eu for an introductory meeting.
by Farweb