Water in Turkey-EU Relations
The water policy of the European Union (former European Community) dates back to 1970's. In the course of these years, the Union states made lots of legal regulations in order to protect their waters against the pollution.
The historical development of the EU water policy could be analyzed in three periods:(1)
The First Period: This period, when the main theme was the “Community Health Care” and which encompassed 1975-1980's, focused on the environmental quality standards. In 1975 the surface water directive and drinking water directives were published. These directives comprehend the water quality standards and the protection of the surface waters that are used for drinking water.
The Second Period: This period embodies 1990's. In 1991 the European Water regulation entered into force for the very first time. For the first time not only the water quality but also the control of reaching the emissions to the desired level was focused on. The other regulations entering into force during this period are; the Urban Wastewater Management Directive, the New Drinking Water Quality Directive, the Nitrate Directive, and the Integrated Pollution and Protection Directive.
The Third Period: During this period embodying 2000's and afterwards, the approaches of the former two periods were combined and the European Union created a common framework for the water policy. The Water Framework Directive, which was accepted in this period grounding on the “integrated management and sustainable management and protection”, brings an integrated approach to the use of water resources.
The European Union Water Framework Directive was accepted on October 23, 2000 from the European Parliament and the Council's thought of “water as being a natural resource that is supposed to be protected rather than being a commercial product”. This directive aims at protecting and ameliorating all of the European Union's waters.
The Water Framework Directive creates a framework for the European environment laws. The directive, which pursues the goal of harmonizing the current EU water policies and increasing the water quality in all of the aquatic areas within the community, is a new integrated approach willing to protect and develop the sustainable use of all of the waters.
The European Union Water Framework Directive is the most important and innovative water law that the EU has made for the last 40 years. This directive has brought an approach accepting the hydrological cycle as a whole. The environmental objective of the directive is bringing all of the ground and surface waters within the European Union borders to a “good status” level as from 2015. This directive constitutes the legal framework of the EU's water policy. In addition to that the candidate countries are stipulated with harmonizing EUWFD to their national water law, when they are full member of the EU.(2)
Table: The Implementation Calendar of the Water Framework Directive in the EU Member Countries- the Completed Ones and the Ones that are Foreseen to be Completed (3)
|
Dates
|
The Accomplished and Foreseen to be Accomplished Activities
|
|
22 December 2000
|
Directive's entered into force (Article 22)
|
|
22 December 2003
|
The member countries' promulgating the laws that they are supposed to respect the directive, the codes and the administrative arrangements; and declaring them to the commission on December 22, 2003 at the latest (Article 24)
|
|
22 December 2004
|
Declaring the list of the adequate authorities to the Commission (Article 3)
|
|
22 December 2004
|
Defining the qualities of the surface and ground waters, revising the effects of the human activities and completing the economic analysis related to the use of water for each and every region. (Article 5)
Doing the registration for the protected areas (Article 6-Article 7)
|
|
22 December 2005
|
Setting proper criteria by the member countries, in the lack of definition criterium of the important and continuous tendencies related to the ground water pollution, at a community-level. (Article 17-4)
|
|
22 December 2006
|
Completing the programs in order to monitor the quality of water for each river basin region. (Article-8)
Creating river basin plans, time tables and working schedules for each of the river basins. (Article- 14)
In case of not preparing the primary pollutive list creating risk for the aquatic environment at a community-level, setting the environmental quality standards for all of the surface waters affected by the polluters in the member states.(Article 16)
|
|
22 December 2007
|
Declaring and resorting to the important water management issues that are determined for the each river basin regions.
|
|
22 December 2008
|
Declaring and resorting to the river basin management planning drafts.
|
|
22 December 2009
|
Declaring the measures programme in order to reach the environmental objectives determined for each of the river basins. (Article 11)
Declaration of the first plan for each river basin. (Article -13)
|
|
22 December 2010
|
Providing the proper water pricing policies.
|
|
22 December 2012
|
Functionalizing of the measures programme in order to reach the environmental objectives for each river basin region. (Article- 11)
|
|
22 December 2015
|
Reaching the main environmental objectives. (Article-4)
|
|
22 December 2015 and each 6 years in the forthcoming years.
|
Revision and updating of the plans.
(Article 13 - Article 14 - Article15)
|
Turkey, whose European Union candidacy process still continues, is also under the charge of harmonizing her national legislation with the European Union legislation. Within this framework, the EU Water Framework Directive is one of the requirements Turkey has confronted with in the harmonization process. The harmonization stage is composed of two main processes; the first process is the transposition and implementation of the EU legislation, and the second process is making the infrastructure investments, which are required for the total harmony, both by the public and private sectors. For these processes, two basic documents are preliminary. The first document is the Accession Partnership Document, which embodies short and medium term works in the line with the Copenhagen Criteria, for the EU candidate countries. The first Accession Partnership Document for Turkey was prepared in 2001 and launching the harmonization works for the water quality legislation, which is a part of the aforesaid short-term objectives in the 2003 Accession Partnership Document, was deemed suitable. And the second document is the program entitled, “Turkey's National Action Programme for the Adoption of the EU Acquis” in 2003 which is considered as a response to the Accession Partnership Document. In the national programme document, the water legislation is handled with the environmental issues.(4)
Turkey's EU Water Framework Directive harmonization process was carried out in 2000's with the contribution of EU funds and the cooperation of the member countries. This harmonization process is respectively, “the MATRA Pre-accession Programme Project for the Implementation of the Water Framework Directive in Turkey”; the “Environmental Heavy-Cost Investment Planning Project (ENVEST Project)” prepared for the Ministry of Environment and Forestry and the “Restructuring of the Turkish Water Sector for the Implementation of the EU Water Directives” research. The most important work related to the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive in Turkey was supported by the Dutch government. The consortium led by the Grontmij Consulting Engineers carried out the implementation of the directive project between the dates of January 2002 and November 2003. This project constitutes the last step of the three constituents of the twinning project entitled, the “Capacity Building Support to the Water Sector in Turkey”. The first part of the projects includes carrying out the legal and institutional analysis of the Water Framework Directive, Urban Waste Water Treatment Plant Directive and the Hazardous Substances Directive. The second part aims at developing a road map oriented to preparing the implementation plans at a national level for the implementation of these three directives. Within the compass of the project, a draft report entitled, “Institutional and Legal Empowerment in the Field of Water Management in Turkey” was prepared on March 3, 2003. Thanks to this report, the present structure of the water management in Turkey and the problem fields were identified, and an overall picture related to harmonization was drawn with the definitions and concepts of the Directive. In this table, the lack of inter-institutional coordination in Turkey; as well as legal, financing, capacity and regional planning deficiencies were mentioned.(5)
On December 21, 2009 the environment chapter was opened within the scope of the accession negotiations. Accordingly, Turkey promised that she would put the water legislation works to be carried out in the Water Framework Directive within the harmonization programme into action between 2009 and 2013.
References
(1) F.Holzwarth, “ The EU Water Framework Directive-A Key To Catchment-Based Govarnence”, Water Science and Technology, Vol. 45, No.8, IWA Publishing, 2002, p.106.
(2) Maria Kaika,“TWFD: A new directive for Changing Social, Political and Economic European Framework”, European Planning Studies, Vol.11, No.3, (2003), p.299.
(3) European Union Water Framework Directive, 2000/60/EC
(4) Official Web Page of the Secretariat General for European Union (ABGS), www.abgs.gov.tr/up.2003/up.htm, 2003, p. 590.
(5) Özden Bilen, Türkiye’nin Su Gündemi: Su Yönetimi ve AB Su Politikaları, Ankara, DSİ, 2009, p.209.