EU Commission releases proposal for revised Drinking Water Directive

On February 1st, the EU Commission released the official proposal for the revision of the Drinking Water Directive (DWD).

Article 10 of the Drinking Water Directive concerns materials and products in contact with drinking water.

 

  The proposal states:

Former Article 10 — Quality assurance of treatment equipment and materials (deleted)

Former Article 10 is deleted: it is considered that this Article is no longer necessary under Directive 98/83/EC and is partly replaced by new Article 10 on domestic distribution risk assessment. The necessary harmonisation will take place, instead, under internal market legislation with the issuance of standardisation mandates under the Construction Products Regulation. Until these standardisation mandates are executed and the harmonised standards are published in the Official Journal, the status quo will continue to apply.


A new Article 10 introduces "obligations related to carrying out domestic distribution risk assessments".

The Commission also released "Questions and Answers on the revision of the Drinking Water Directive".

The revision of the Drinking Water Directive 98/83/EC was included in the Commission's 2017 Work Programme, as a direct follow up to the Right2Water European Citizens' Initiative. The proposal follows the REFIT Evaluation of the Drinking Water Directive and is accompanied by an Impact Assessment and by WHO recommendations.