Bathing water quality for coastal zones in EU countries, levels of compliance

Data source
1. European Commission (3).
2. European Environment Agency (11–13).

Description of data
Data are available as PDF documents in the EU reports on bathing water quality (3) or as Excel tables in the EEA database BATHSEA_EN_V2 (12,13). Data describing individual bathing sites can be derived from the EEA’s “Status of bathing water” database (11).

Data include: year; country name and country code according to ISO 3166-1; zone (freshwater or coastal water); total number of bathing areas; C(G): percentage of bathing areas sufficiently sampled that comply with guide values; C(I): percentage of bathing areas sufficiently sampled that comply with guide values and mandatory values; NB: percentage of bathing areas where bathing was prohibited throughout the bathing season; NC: percentage of bathing areas that do not comply with mandatory values; NF: percentage of bathing areas not sufficiently sampled.

Method of calculating the indicator
The indicator can be computed as R = 100 × (C/T), where R is the indicator value, C is the number of bathing waters complying with the mandatory coliform standards and T is the total number of bathing waters identified for compliance monitoring.

Geographical coverage
EU Member States.

Period of coverage
From 1990 onwards for the EU; 2007 onwards for individual country data.

Frequency of update
Annual reporting from Member States. Sampling and assessment procedures are carried out according to Directive 76/160/EEC.

Data quality
Accurate information on the number of bathing waters and compliant bathing waters are available at EU level in the EU’s annual report on bathing water quality (3).