CYPRUS bathing waters are among the top six cleanest in Europe, meeting the strictest of EU standards, a European Commission report said yesterday.
From 100 beach areas tested only one, in the Paphos area, failed to meet EU standards. This caused Cyprus to slip from 100 per cent compliance in last year’s report.
“This is the third year that Cyprus has reported data on bathing water quality in coastal areas. This is a remarkable effort, considering that Cyprus joined the European Union only in 2004,” said the report.
During the 2006 bathing season 100 bathing areas were monitored, all with sufficient sampling frequency. These were the same areas as last year.
“The bathing water quality was very good during the 2006 bathing season,” the report said.
“The results from the monitoring of the water quality demonstrated that 99 per cent of the bathing areas met the more stringent guide values.”
According to the report the Netherlands, Slovenia and Lithuania scored 100 per cent, Greece scored 99.7 per cent, Britain 99.6 per cent, and Finland 99 per cent.
Lowest quality bathing water was found in Poland with 85.7 per cent. The remainder of the EU countries scored over 90 per cent.
“In Cyprus the average bathing water quality in coastal areas did not change much compared to previous bathing season,” said the report. “The stability index is 99 per cent, which means that nearly all areas maintained the quality achieved during the previous bathing season.”
Every year EU member states are obliged to report on the quality of coastal and freshwater bathing areas located within their territory. In 2006, a total of 21,094 bathing areas were monitored.
The EU Bathing Water Directive lays down two sets of bathing water quality standards: minimum imperative values, with which compliance is mandatory, and stricter guide values, with which compliance is desirable but not obligatory.
In the 2006 bathing season the average compliance rate with the mandatory values was 96.1 per cent for EU coastal bathing areas.
“Despite these encouraging results I am very concerned by the number of bathing sites withdrawn from the list,’” said EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas. “Removing sites from the list because they are polluted is not a solution. Member states must instead draw up plans for cleaning up these polluted sites.”
The Commission has already opened lawsuits against 11 EU nations for taking their dirty beaches off the list altogether to keep their national average high.
Cyprus did not withdraw any beaches from the list.
