Faced with drought, EU countries urged to reuse their wastewater

A wastewater treatment site in Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Paris region).

AFP - KENZO TRIBOUILLARD

Text by: RFI Follow

2 mins

In this context of drought and lack of water almost everywhere in Europe, everyone is looking for solutions.

This Wednesday, August 3, the European Commission called on Member States to make efforts to treat wastewater and reuse it in the agricultural sector.

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Faced with global warming, the European Union must accelerate the reuse of its wastewater to irrigate its agricultural land, says the Commission.

According to her, there is an urgent need to “

water” to water and irrigate European fields.

Brussels gives a figure to support its warning: more than 40,000 million m3 of wastewater are treated each year within the Union, but only 964 million are reused.

That's actually less than 2.5%.

There is therefore great potential, notes the European executive.

But this potential is still very largely under-exploited with great disparities between the Member States, reports our correspondent in Brussels,

.

The champions are Cyprus and Malta, which reuse 90 and 60% of their wastewater respectively.

France is also cited as an example, with 7.7 million m3 of treated wastewater reused each year.

No legislative framework to encourage this practice

To catch up with this European delay, it will be necessary to act at the legislative and regulatory level, because for the moment, there is no support framework which encourages this practice.

Once better regulated, the reuse of wastewater can therefore be much more easily the subject of financial incentives with one objective: to multiply the quantity of water reused each year by six by 2025, to reach more than 6 billion m3 of water reused each year.

This is a necessity, as the lack of water will be felt more and more in the years to come, with

having enormous consequences.

For the environment, but also for all economic sectors, such as agriculture, tourism or industry.

Water shortages currently affect 11% of the EU population and 17% of its territory, but the situation is more worrying around the Mediterranean where around 50% of the population lives under constant water stress during the winter. 'summer.

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