1. Commission activities on water economics SCG, 7.11.2007
Maria Brättemark
Water Framework Directive Team
DG Environment Unit D.2 ”Water and Marine” - European Commission

2. Indepth analysis art 5 report
In-depth analysis of requirements and detailed assessment of MS reporting
Follow-up March 2007 Communication
Internal report for Commission
Cost recovery, environmental and resource costs, water services and water uses, baseline scenario, cost-effectiveness analysis, other themes…
By WFD consultants
Next step : Communicate some lessons learnt…

3. Competitiveness
Title : “The links between environment and competitiveness”
Expect work start November – 1 year
Literature review on impact of environmental legislation on competitiveness
Case studies on
Water
Resource efficiency
At least address US, Canada, Australia, Japan - including regional comparisons
Water pricing and water scarcity flagged in out ToR as key issues.

4. Water accounts
UN SEEAW “System of Environmental Economic Accounting for Water” – Final draft March 2007 – global standard by 2010 ?
EEA/Eurostat pilot project – mid 2008 ?
Testing the ‘handbook’ with their available data
Opportunity to check the feasibility of an EU wide input/output model
Challenges :
Administrative unit to RBD
Quality accounts and the valuation of water resources

5. Handbook on IA
Title: Handbook for a pan-European approach to economic assessment of water related impacts of policies"
Handbook to complement the IA guidelines to help assessing economic impacts on the aquatic environment of EU policies
Workshops
Key components :
Inventory/typology of costs and benefits
“Accounting framework”
Risks and uncertainty, including climate change