Article 8 — Monitoring of surface water status, groundwater status and protected areas

1. Member States shall ensure the establishment of programmes for the monitoring of water status in order to establish a coherent and comprehensive overview of water status within each river basin district: — for surface waters such programmes shall cover: (i) the volume and level or rate of flow to the extent relevant for ecological and chemical status and ecological potential, and (ii) the ecological and chemical status and ecological potential; — for groundwaters such programmes shall cover monitoring of the chemical and quantitative status, — for protected areas the above programmes shall be supplemented by those specifications contained in Community legislation under which the individual protected areas have been established. 2. These programmes shall be operational at the latest six years after the date of entry into force of this Directive unless otherwise specified in the legislation concerned. Such monitoring shall be in accordance with the requirements of Annex V. 3. The Commission is empowered to adopt implementing acts to set out technical specifications and standardised methods for analysis and monitoring of water status in accordance with Annex V, to establish formats for the reporting of monitoring and status data, to adopt the results of the intercalibration exercise and the values established for the Member State monitoring system classifications in accordance with Section 1.4.1(ix) of Annex V, and to adopt indicators of progress allowing comparison of the progress made by Member States towards achieving the good status or potential of their water bodies. When establishing the formats for the reporting of monitoring and status data, the Commission may avail itself of technical and scientific support available from the European Environment Agency (EEA). Those implementing acts shall be adopted in accordance with the examination procedure referred to in Article 21(2). 4. Member States shall ensure that the available and validated monitoring data on biological quality elements in surface waters collected in accordance with Section 1.3 of Annex V to this Directive are made available to the public and to the EEA every three years, and that the available and validated monitoring data on chemical quality elements in surface waters and groundwater collected in accordance with Sections 1.3 and 2.4 of Annex V to this Directive are made available to the public and to the EEA every two years electronically in accordance with Directives 2003/4/EC ( 4 ), 2007/2/EC ( 5 ) and (EU) 2019/1024 ( 6 ) of the European Parliament and of the Council. For those purposes, Member States shall use the formats established in accordance with paragraph 3 of this Article and automated reporting and data delivery mechanisms aligned with the relevant Water Information System for Europe State of the Environment data flows. 5. The EEA shall ensure that the information made available in accordance with paragraph 4 is regularly processed and analysed for the purpose of making it available, via relevant Union portals, for reuse by the Commission and relevant Union agencies and for the purpose of providing the Commission, the Member States and the public with objective, reliable and comparable information, in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 401/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 7 ). 6. By 11 November 2027, the Commission shall publish a report on options for the establishment, financing and functioning of a European Union joint monitoring facility. The report shall take into account, inter alia, the following: (a) the voluntary nature of the use of such a joint monitoring facility; (b) the scope of the analyses to be performed by such a facility, including the range of substances and indicators to be covered from the lists established under this Directive, Directive 2006/118/EC and Directive 2008/105/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 8 ); (c) the sources of funding for such a facility, which may include Union co-funding; (d) the operating model of such a facility, considering both centralised and decentralised options; Following the report, the Commission shall, where appropriate, present a legislative proposal in order to establish a European Union joint monitoring facility.

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Source: EUR-Lex CELLAR · retrieved 2026-08-09