EU Report 2014: Greece Has Excellent Bathing Sites

Photo © Region of South Aegean

Greece is among the top five European countries that have excellent bathing sites this year, according to the annual report on bathing water quality in Europe that was released on 27 May by the European Environment Agency (EEA).

Photo © Constantinos Dougas

The report, which was prepared in cooperation with the European Commission, revealed that the water at Europe’s beaches, rivers and lakes was generally of high quality in 2013, with 95 percent of these sites meeting minimum requirements. Coastal sites performed slightly better than inland bathing waters, the data showed.

All the bathing sites in Cyprus and Luxembourg were deemed “excellent.” These countries were followed by Malta (99 percent deemed excellent), Croatia (95 percent) and Greece (93 percent).

At the other end of the scale, European Union Member States with the highest proportion of sites with a “poor” status were Estonia (6 percent), the Netherlands (5 percent), Belgium (4 percent), France (3 percent), Spain (3 percent) and Ireland (3 percent).

In Greece, 2,162 bathing waters were reported for the 2013 bathing season – 9.8 percent of all bathing waters in Europe. Out of all bathing waters in Greece, 2,016 met the “excellent” level,” 111 had “good water quality,” 18 were classified as “sufficient” and only five 5 were rated as “poor.”

The annual bathing water quality report from EEA tracks the water quality at 22,000 bathing sites across the EU, Switzerland and, for the first time, Albania.

Alongside the report, the EEA published an interactive map showing how each bathing site performed in 2013.