Right2Water
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Right2Water is a campaign to commit the European Union and member states to implement the human right to water and sanitation.[1]
It has three stated goals:
- Guaranteed water and sanitation for all in Europe.
- No liberalisation of water services.
- Universal (Global) access to water and sanitation.
The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) represented more than 120 NGO and was supported by the German and Austrian trade unions.[2] The backbone of the ECI was the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) whose President Anne-Marie Perret was also the president of the citizens Committee.[3] On 21 March 2013, it became the first ECI to collect more than a million signatures and they reached the minimum quota of signatures in seven countries on 7 May 2013. It stopped the signature collection on 7 September 2013, with a total of 1,857,605 signatures. The initiative was submitted to the European Commission in December 2013 and the public hearing took place on 17 February 2014 at the European Parliament.[4] In March 2014, the commission has adopted the Communication in response to the Right2Water initiative.[5] On 1 July 2015 the Roadmap for the evaluation of the Drinking Water Directive has been published by the European Commission.[6]
In response, the European Parliament criticised the commission for failing the meet the initiative's demands.[7] The report by Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan called on the Commission "to recognise that affordable access to water is a basic human right."[8]
In 2010, three years before the petition, Paris was the first European local entity to have concluded the remunicipalization process of water and sanitation, entrusted to Eau de Paris.[9]
From 2010 until 2022 many other cities and regions have declared its support to the human right to water (like Slovenia[10] and Andalucia[11]) many remunicipalisations also have taken place.[12]
On 19 March 2014 the commission partly meet the proposals. The commission included the following:[13]
- A reinforcement of the implementation of the water quality legislation, building on the commitments presented in the 7th EAP and the Water Blueprint;
- Launching of an EU-wide public consultation on the Drinking Water Directive, notably in view of improving access to quality water in the EU;
- Improvement of the transparency for urban wastewater and drinking water data management and explore the idea of benchmarking water quality;
- Set-up of a more structured dialogue between stakeholders on transparency in the water sector;
- Cooperation with existing initiatives to provide a wider set of benchmarks for water services;
- Stimulation of innovative approaches for development assistance (e.g. support to partnerships between water operators and to public-public partnerships); promote sharing of best practices between Member States (e.g. on solidarity instruments) and identify new opportunities for cooperation.
- Advocation of universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation as a priority area for future Sustainable Development Goals.