EFRWS25 convened regulators, EU institutions and stakeholders in Brussels and online on December 4th 2025, to examine how economic regulation can operationalise Europe’s Water Resilience Strategy. This summary captures the Forum’s core takeaways on financing resilient investment through tariff and funding frameworks, using common KPIs for benchmarking and risk-based regulation, and designing Extended Producer Responsibility under the recast Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive—alongside dedicated afternoon sessions on urban runoff and innovative governance tools.
Institutional Opening
Vera Eiró WAREG and ERSAR President
In her opening speech, Vera Eiró, President of WAREG and of ERSAR, welcomed representatives of EU institutions, regulators, utilities, consumers and stakeholders in Brussels and online, framing the 4th European Forum as a key moment to reflect on how economic regulation can underpin Europe’s water resilience. She recalled that WAREG now brings together 34 regulatory authorities from EU Member States and candidate countries, acting as a platform for knowledge exchange, benchmarking and capacity building, and as a trusted partner for EU institutions. Against a backdrop of climate change, droughts, floods and rising quality demands, she stressed that independent, technical and transparent regulation is essential to turn EU policies into affordable, sustainable and resilient water and wastewater services.
Eiró underlined WAREG’s commitment to supporting implementation of the recast Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive, the Drinking Water Directive and the Water Resilience Strategy, but also pointed to what she sees as a missed opportunity: neither the Directive nor the Strategy fully institutionalise independent economic regulation at EU level. Resilience, she argued, is not only about infrastructure and technology but also about governance, data and strong regulators. She presented the Forum’s three panels as concrete contributions to this agenda: aligning public funding and tariff regulation for resilient investment (Panel 1), using performance benchmarking and common KPIs as a “resilience instrument” (Panel 2), and embedding Extended Producer Responsibility in wastewater investment to share costs more fairly along the value chain (Panel 3).
Pernille Weiss-Ehler, Water Resilience Expert and Cabinet Member in the Cabinet of Commissioner Jessika Roswall
Pernille Weiss-Ehler, Water Resilience Expert and Cabinet Member in the Cabinet of Commissioner Jessika Roswall, opened EFRWS25 by linking the Forum directly to the new EU Water Resilience Strategy and its goal for the EU to become at least 10% more water efficient by 2030. She stressed that the key task now is to develop, by the 2027 mid-term review, a robust methodology for measuring and delivering this target, built on data and practical experience from regulators and operators.
She framed her remarks around the Strategy’s three objectives: restoring and protecting the water cycle; securing clean and affordable water and sanitation for all at all times; and building a water-smart economy. Water can no longer be treated as an infinite resource, she argued, and economic and regulatory frameworks must reflect scarcity, resilience and the polluter-pays principle. In this context, she welcomed the Forum’s focus on tariffs, performance benchmarking and Extended Producer Responsibility, and called for water to be placed at the core of the EU’s broader circular economy agenda. Looking ahead, she pointed to the new EU Water Forum and the forthcoming Water Resilience Stakeholder Platform as key vehicles for continued dialogue, and paid tribute to regulators as essential partners in turning the Strategy’s actions into reality.
Panel 1 – Funding a Resilient Water Future
Keynote presentation
Lorenzo Bardelli, Director at ARERA (Italy), opened Panel 1 by analysing the need for infrastructure and efficient regulation to secure water services. Drawing on Italy’s experience since the introduction of independent economic regulation, he showed that water investment has increased significantly while operating costs remained broadly stable, thanks to a tariff methodology that embeds quality and resilience targets into allowed revenues. ARERA’s framework groups technical quality indicators into seven clusters, including a new M0 indicator on water resilience, and aggregates granular performance data into “micro-indicators” that can be clearly understood by citizens and policymakers. This allows decision-makers to make explicit trade-offs between higher quality standards, investment needs and tariff paths, and to align national financing strategies with the increasingly demanding EU water and climate agenda.
Panel discussion
In the subsequent discussion, Hans Goossens (Water Europe) stressed that water resilience is now a precondition for Europe’s competitiveness and security, arguing that the next EU Multiannual Financial Framework should mobilise substantial additional public resources for water and treat it as a strategic asset on a par with energy and defence. He underlined the need for integrated funding packages that combine EU grants, national budgets and repayable finance, guided by clear performance criteria and long-term resilience objectives.
Oliver Loebel (EurEau) highlighted the growing investment gap facing European utilities as they tackle network renewal, stricter quality standards and emerging contaminants. He insisted that tariffs alone cannot close this gap everywhere, and that “pollution at source” and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) under the recast Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (UWWTD) must be fully implemented to avoid shifting disproportionate costs onto households and farmers. Milo Fiasconaro (Aqua Publica Europea) underlined that public operators are being asked to expand their scope – from water reuse and nature-based solutions to energy neutrality and stormwater management – while preserving affordability. He called for a renewed financing model that combines fair tariffs with strong public support and financial instruments from public banks, ensuring that investment programmes remain socially and politically sustainable.
Closing the panel, Vania Paccagnan (EIB) emphasised that bridging Europe’s water investment needs requires bankable, well-prepared projects and stable regulatory environments. She pointed to the role of the EIB and other public financial institutions in blending EU and national funds with long-term lending, but stressed that credible tariff frameworks, climate-resilient planning and robust project pipelines are essential preconditions for unlocking this finance at scale.
Panel 2 – Performance Benchmarking in Water Regulation
Keynote presentation
Ivaylo Kastchiev, WAREG Vice-President, presented an interim update on WAREG’s “13 Common KPIs” initiative, designed to create a shared benchmarking framework across European water regulators. He explained that WAREG regulators collectively use more than 400 indicators, often defined differently and based on data held in “islands” inside utilities, which makes cross-country comparison difficult. The 13 common indicators, grouped under coverage, service quality, network renewal, non-revenue water, energy efficiency and cost/staff efficiency, were calculated for a first dataset of WAREG members for 2023. Initial results show high coverage and drinking water quality, but persistent challenges on network rehabilitation, leakage and cost coverage, with wide dispersion across countries. Kastchiev underlined that developing common KPIs is technically and institutionally challenging – due to data gaps, reliability issues and different regulatory mandates – but is a necessary step to support risk-based supervision, inform tariff decisions and provide transparent benchmarks for consumers and investors.
Panel discussion
Susana Rodrigues (ERSAR, Portugal) reflected on more than a decade of national benchmarking and explained how Portugal uses performance indicators as both a “thermometer” and a regulatory tool. She described how ERSAR combines a core set of indicators with context-specific analysis to accommodate very different utility profiles – from large metropolitan utilities to small, rural operators – and stressed the importance of gradual implementation, dialogue and data quality controls to avoid perverse incentives and indicator “gaming”.
From the European Commission’s perspective, Trudy Higgins (DG ENV) underlined that harmonised indicators will become increasingly important for implementing and monitoring the Drinking Water and Urban Wastewater Treatment Directives, including on issues such as leakage, energy use and treatment performance. She pointed to the Commission’s expert groups and thematic sub-groups, where member states and the Commission are working together on common definitions, reporting requirements and secondary legislation, and welcomed WAREG’s work as a contribution to more consistent, risk-based implementation across the EU.
Kevin De Bondt (BRUGEL, Brussels) contributed a city-scale perspective, explaining how a regional regulator with limited direct competences over water utilities can still leverage benchmarking and KPIs to influence investment priorities and tariff discussions. He stressed that, in dense urban systems facing ageing infrastructure, climate risks and social vulnerability, regulators need both granular operational data and simple, communicable indicators to support political decision-making and keep the focus on long-term resilience rather than short-term budget pressures. Overall, the panel converged on the view that common KPIs should be seen as a living tool: starting with pragmatic, comparable metrics and progressively deepening their use in tariff setting, performance contracts and EU-level monitoring.
Panel 3 – Embedding Producer Responsibility in Wastewater Investment
Keynote presentation
Giulia Gadani (REF – Ricerche), research partner in WAREG’s ongoing study on EPR systems, introduced the emerging EPR framework under the recast Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive and its implications for regulators and utilities. She reviewed existing EPR schemes in 16 EU countries across various waste streams and highlighted that only a small subset offers useful lessons for the wastewater sector, given its status as a highly regulated, fully centralised natural monopoly with limited potential for secondary raw materials. Gadani explained that under the new Directive, cosmetic and pharmaceutical producers will be required to finance at least 80% of the full costs of quaternary treatment, including capital and operating expenditures and monitoring, with progressive implementation deadlines up to 2045.
She distinguished between low and high “transferability” elements from waste-sector EPR: multi-PRO competition and profit-driven models are unlikely to add value in wastewater, while collective, not-for-profit schemes, central planning and possibly state-managed funds appear better suited to mobilise large, coordinated investments and ensure consistent standards. Gadani argued that regulators will be pivotal in defining “full costs”, benchmarking quaternary treatment costs in tariffs, designing eco-modulation criteria with utilities, overseeing financial flows between Producer Responsibility Organisations (PROs) and operators, and safeguarding tariff affordability.
Panel discussion
Moderating the discussion, WAREG Vice-President Pál Ságvári (Hungary) recalled that many WAREG members already regulate both solid waste and water, which motivated the comparative study to identify which EPR design features can realistically be carried over to wastewater. Andrea Guerrini (WAREG Vice-President, ARERA) agreed that the wastewater EPR will function essentially as a financial mechanism layered on top of a natural monopoly, unlike the more market-based EPR schemes seen in packaging and other waste streams. He stressed that this makes the regulator’s role even more critical in defining efficient costs, preventing over- or under-compensation and integrating EPR flows into tariff frameworks without destabilising utilities’ investment capacity.
Konstantinos Tsimaras (RAAEY, Greece) brought in the perspective of a tourism-intensive country with strong seasonal peaks and many islands, arguing that national transposition will need flexibility to accommodate very different wastewater systems while still meeting EU timelines and environmental objectives. He emphasised the need for robust monitoring, planning and reuse strategies so that quaternary investments also support broader water-scarcity and circular-economy goals. Gari Villa-Landa Sokolova (EurEau) framed EPR as a long-overdue application of the polluter-pays principle in the water sector. She warned that attempts to weaken or delay the scheme – including legal challenges by industry and upcoming legislative “omnibus” discussions – could shift costs back onto water consumers and small users, undermining both fairness and the Directive’s zero-pollution ambitions.
From the utility side, the Hungarian water company representative stressed the operational challenges of preparing for quaternary treatment—such as technology choices, energy requirements and analytical capabilities—and called for predictable, long-term funding streams aligned with realistic implementation schedules. Across the panel, there was broad agreement that, given the scale of upcoming investments and the complexity of allocating costs between producers and consumers, independent regulators will need to play a central coordinating role: defining cost benchmarks, overseeing national funds or PROs, monitoring performance and ensuring that EPR delivers genuine pollution control and resilience without jeopardising tariff affordability.
Morning Closing Remarks
Vera Eiró WAREG and ERSAR President
Closing the Forum, Vera Eiró returned to the Water Resilience Strategy and the discussions of the day, noting that WAREG is already working on implementation costs for the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive and on the design of Extended Producer Responsibility schemes. The purpose, she stressed, is not to say that implementation is impossible, but to understand “how much it costs so that it gets done” and to help regulators and utilities prepare in a realistic way. She described the day’s exchanges as “just the beginning” of a deeper contribution by economic regulators to the Strategy.
Eiró reaffirmed that WAREG stands ready to support the European Commission and national authorities in implementing the Strategy “not just because it is a European strategy, but because it is necessary to protect consumers, utilities and our future.” She thanked participants on site and online for their engagement, highlighted the association’s availability as a long-term partner in EU water governance, and closed with a forward-looking note, expressing confidence that WAREG will reconvene in two years’ time to continue advancing Europe’s water resilience.
Veronica Manfredi, EU Commission Director
Veronica Manfredi closed the Forum by putting the discussions into the wider EU policy context. She recalled the recent ResourceEU communication and the intention to reopen the Water Framework Directive after new guidance, stressing that the aim is to make implementation and, where needed, simplification easier without weakening environmental or health standards.
She drew three main lessons from the panels. From Panel 1, she underlined the need for clear financing and regulatory frameworks that reward future-proof, nature-based and water-reuse solutions, noting that with growing water stress “business as usual” is no longer viable and calling for swift adoption of implementing acts under the recast Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. From Panel 2, she highlighted that comparable performance data and risk indicators are essential to the Water Resilience Strategy, explicitly welcoming WAREG’s common KPIs as a governance tool. From Panel 3, she addressed the uncertainty around Extended Producer Responsibility, made clear the Commission does not favour reopening the Directive, and announced updated cost work on quaternary treatment alongside upcoming “simplification” initiatives that must not reduce protection levels.
In her final remarks, Manfredi called for a more structured dialogue with regulators, including in the forthcoming WFD revision. She stressed that getting “the right price of water” is a key weakness to fix: when all actors share costs fairly, price impacts remain manageable and the benefits of resilient, clean water services are often underestimated.
WATERUN – Policy and regulatory perspective on urban water runoff
Keynote presentation
In the first afternoon session, Maria Salvetti (Florence School of Regulation / European University Institute) presented the key findings of a WATERUN policy brief on the policy and regulatory framework for urban water runoff. She defined urban runoff as precipitation flowing over impervious urban surfaces (roofs, pavements, roads, compacted soils), carrying diffuse pollutants such as nutrients, heavy metals, pathogens and microplastics into receiving waters. This runoff is amplified by urbanisation and climate change, increasing flood risk, infrastructure damage, service disruption and public-health concerns.
The presentation highlighted fragmented, largely local governance of runoff (municipalities, inter-municipal entities, metropolitan authorities, water authorities) and stressed the need for multi-level coordination with regional and national actors. Funding relies mainly on local taxes, levies, property taxes, stormwater fees and developer contributions, which are often not earmarked for runoff management. Salvetti mapped the relevant EU framework – Water Framework Directive, Zero Pollution Action Plan, Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive recast and Water Resilience Strategy – and showed how they collectively push towards integrated urban wastewater management plans, blue–green infrastructure and “sponge cities” that retain, infiltrate and treat water through parks, green roofs and permeable pavements.
She then illustrated the shift from purely “grey” infrastructure to cost-effective grey–blue–green solutions, using the Copenhagen cloudburst plan as an example of how nature-based and distributed measures can reduce flood damages at lower overall cost, provided legal and financing frameworks allow utilities and cities to co-invest.
Innovative governance for water resilience – focus on economic aspects
(InnWater, GOVAQUA, RETOUCH NEXUS)
Keynote presentations
The second afternoon session, moderated by James Leten (SIWI), brought together the Horizon Europe projects InnWater, GOVAQUA and RETOUCH NEXUS to explore how economic instruments and governance innovation can implement the EU Water Resilience Strategy. Vera Eiró (WAREG President) opened the round table by recalling Europe’s escalating water-related pressures and the three goals of the Water Resilience Strategy – restoring and protecting the water cycle, building a water-smart economy and securing clean water for all. She stressed that appropriate economic tools, underpinned by sound regulation and transparent governance, are essential to turn these goals into practice and to ensure investments remain affordable and socially acceptable.
Bertrand Vallet (European Commission) emphasised that the Strategy raises water on the EU agenda but that its success will depend on integrating water, energy, food and ecosystems (the WEFE nexus) into policy and financing choices. He underlined the need to use economic instruments not only to mobilise funding but also to signal scarcity, drive efficiency and manage risks, cautioning that incentives must be designed so that nature-based solutions genuinely preserve water status and ecosystem functions.
Presenting the joint policy messages of the three projects, Maria Vrachioli (TUM, RETOUCH NEXUS) described how InnWater, GOVAQUA and RETOUCH NEXUS work with living labs and pilot sites across Europe to test new approaches to water governance, economic instruments and socio-economic modelling. She structured the contribution around three pillars: innovative governance (strong, transparent, equitable and cross-sectoral), economic instruments (pricing, subsidies and payments, trading schemes, PPPs and risk-management tools) and economic modelling that explicitly integrates societal preferences. Vrachioli argued that better-designed abstraction and pollution charges, reinforced application of the polluter-pays principle (including EPR) and more systematic use of risk-based instruments and insurance can support all three Water Resilience Strategy goals.
Panel discussion and concluding remarks
The panel discussion then examined how to connect these ideas to real-world governance. Verena Höhn (EcoDaLLi, Danube Lighthouse) drew on the Danube experience to show why local and regional collaboration is indispensable: river-basin challenges must be translated into concrete actions with citizens, municipalities, utilities, businesses and researchers. She highlighted both the hurdles (fragmented competences, capacity constraints, competing priorities) and the benefits of living-lab approaches where affected communities understand their role, trade-offs and gains in terms of sustainable local economies.
Delphine Dupeux (European Landowners’ Organization) called for bridging the urban–rural divide in water governance, noting that land managers, foresters and farmers provide crucial ecosystem services yet depend on viable economic models. She argued that economic instruments and governance reforms should explicitly recognise mutual services between upstream rural and downstream urban areas, ensuring that responsibilities, incentives and benefits are coherently shared across the territory.
Marco Delpero (WAREG Head of Secretariat / ARERA) explained how economic regulators can support water resilience by providing long-term certainty to investors, incentivising efficiency and innovation, and progressively integrating environmental and resource costs into tariff methodologies in line with the Water Framework Directive. He stressed that forward-looking, output-based regulation, coupled with targeted social measures such as income-based bonuses or subsidies, can reconcile investment needs with affordability and help align water-sector decisions with broader climate and resilience objectives.
In closing reflections, Maria Salvetti and James Leten underlined that, compared with a decade ago, Europe now has far better data and a richer toolbox – from charges, EPR and subsidies to risk-sharing schemes and innovative bonds – to experiment with new governance and financing models. The session concluded that leveraging these instruments through transparent, participatory and multi-level governance, with regulators playing a central convening role, will be key to making the Water Resilience Strategy operational on the ground.