What do the Water Framework Directive and the Habitats Directive have in common? Why do the directives need to be harmonised?

The Water Framework Directive and the Habitats Directive share a common goal – to achieve good quality in freshwater ecosystems by assessing their quality, protecting them and managing them properly. However, the two directives take different approaches, which also lead to different quality assessments.

Harmonising the directives – put simply, improving the monitoring system, as recommended by both the European Commission and the Prioritised Action Framework – brings several benefits: more efficient resource management and integration of different sectors, lower overall costs of national monitoring, better quality of the data collected, comparable data for reporting, and aligned management measures.