HELCOM (Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission – Helsinki Commission) is the governing body of the Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area, known as the Helsinki Convention. The Contracting Parties are Denmark, Estonia, the European Union, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Sweden.

The BSR WATER platform, uniting 7 transnational projects, cooperated with HELCOM in providing the input into the regional policy recommendations, and with UBC Sustainable Cities Commission – in developing of the Baltic Smart Water Hub.

This Directive concerns the quality of water intended for human consumption. Its objective is to protect human health from adverse effects of any contamination of water intended for human consumption by ensuring that it is wholesome and clean.

The Directive laid down the essential quality standards at EU level. A total of 48 microbiological, chemical and indicator parameters must be monitored and tested regularly. Regular information regarding the quality of water has to be provided to consumers, and, additionally, reported to the European Commission every three years.

The EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region is an agreement between the EU member states bordering the Baltic Sea (Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland) and the European Commission. The strategy has three main objectives:

This Directive aims at reducing and managing the risks that floods pose to human health, the environment, cultural heritage and economic activity. The Directive applies to inland waters as well as all coastal waters across the whole territory of the EU.

This Directive focuses on ensuring environmental protection and sustainable use of the EU’s marine waters and achieving Good Environmental Status (GES) of them by 2020. The Directive also relates to the protection of marine biodiversity.

This Directive aims to protect water quality across Europe by preventing nitrates from agricultural sources polluting ground and surface waters and by promoting the use of good farming practices.

This directive, despite regulating exclusively agricultural use, is the only sludge-specific legal act at the Community level, and also the most important one. The sludge from plants treating domestic and urban waste waters, from septic tanks, or other similar installations can be used in agriculture only in accordance with this directive.

The urban waste water treatment directive was adopted in 1991. The objective of this directive is to ‘protect the environment from adverse effects of waste water discharges from urban sources and specific industries’. The European Commission conducted an evaluation of the directive in 2019. This evaluation confirmed that the implementation of the directive has led to a significant reduction in pollutant releases. However, the evaluation showed that there are still sources of pollution that are not yet adequately addressed by the current rules.

The Directive aims for 'good status' for all ground and surface waters (rivers, lakes, transitional waters, and coastal waters) in the EU. The ecological and chemical status of surface waters are assessed according to the following criteria: