Socio-economic justification for not achieving the objectives of the Water Framework Directive

The European Water Framework Directive requires all water bodies to achieve good status by 2015. Several derogations are proposed to postpone the deadline for achieving good status (to 2021 or 2027) or to define a less strict objective. All these derogations must be the subject of a detailed argument to the EU. There are three possible reasons for derogating from the initial objective: natural conditions or technical feasibility (technical reasons) and disproportionate costs (economic reasons). The study carried out focuses on the latter reason, for which 1,000 bodies of water were identified as potentially disproportionately expensive. This "serial" analysis was carried out on the basis of computer modelling.