EWM Final Declaration - Girona Annual Meeting 2025
Girona, 8 December 2025
The EWM Annual Meeting 2025 came at a particularly critical moment, marked by deregulation processes promoted by the European Commission, growing pressure on water resources, and increasing frequency of prolonged droughts and floods. This context coincides with a key preparatory year for the third UN World Water Conference (December 2026), where Member States will need to define their positions and commitments.
This scenario is further complicated by the rise of far-right political forces across Europe, which drives deregulation and threatens fundamental rights such as universal access to water, recognized by the UN General Assembly and enshrined in the Drinking Water Directive.
In this context, the Girona meeting offered a platform for analyzing the impacts of European policies on water management and for developing strategies to defend water as a common and a fundamental human right. The event featured international, European, and national experts, providing critical and rigorous insights into current water-related challenges.
During the Girona meeting, held from 5 to 7 December, the European Water Movement (EWM), raised serious concerns regarding the negative consequences of the revision of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) announced by the European Commission on 10 December 2025, arguing it’s an obstacle for projects’ permitting such as mining projects. One of the main objectives of the meeting was to analyse the proposed deregulation of EU water-related legislation, both in terms of legislative amendment and financing mechanisms.
According to EWM members, weakening this common legal framework would eliminate any guarantee of maintaining the ecological and chemical status of water bodies across the EU. The WFD is the cornerstone of European water policy, and the EWM calls on Members of the European Parliament to defend the Directive and its current standards. Organisations from Catalonia recalled that the WFD has been crucial to improving the conservation status of rivers and aquifers.
The potential revision of the WFD comes only a few years after the Commission’s own evaluation concluded that the Directive is “fit-for-purpose” and essential to meeting common objectives on water and health protection.
Besides, the on-going momentum of rearmament and remilitarization launched by European institutions is a priority issue. Such developments pose questions on both EU policy budgetary priorities and their impacts on the environment and public participation: they risk prevailing on any other issue, water included, and would undermine, reduce or nullify deliberations about preservation of water resources, measures against pollution, and destruction of ecosystems at large, with the argument of being of “overriding public interest”.
The EWM also denounces the shameless aggressive influence efforts of mining and industrial lobbies over the European Commission and the EU Parliament, which prioritise private short-term economic interests over the right to a healthy environment and the health of people in Europe. The Commission has repeatedly stated its support for the Human Right to Water and Sanitation, following the nearly two million signatures collected for the first European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI Right2Water) in 2013, yet its recent actions directly contradict these commitments.
The EWM reiterates its opposition to current policy of European institutions that strongly support the commodification and quotation of natural assets, water included, together with the private financing and increasing role of big capitals in the government of water cycle and resources. These policies are completely against our basic principles of water as part of the commons free from commodification and of public, democratic, participative, grassroots water governance.
The Roadmap towards Nature Credits published by the EU Commission in July 2025, aiming at attracting private investment for nature conservation, constitutes another alerting sign of a Europe governed by the lack of ambition to change the status quo and continue business as usual, where polluters and damagers can further benefit from their detrimental activities rather than shifting to meaningful sustainable practices.
Given that both militarization and natural assets privatization currently characterize policies pursued by European and International institutions, effective interfaces for social movements are shrinking. In this context, social subjects, and in particular EWM, should operate at multiple levels:
- Towards official institutions: official public declaration and communication of EWM stance against militarist and privatization policies, also as need for clarity in respect of people and public opinion. The EWM is very much inclined to work with local and EU institutions to continue guaranteeing the protection of water and life at large.
- In social context: mass mobilization and struggles, including coordination and solidarity between different realities. EWM, together with other social networks, will publicly support grassroots initiatives, in particular the campaign “Stop rearm Europe”. In the meantime, where feasible, the EWM could appeal to the human rights institutions against policies hostile to grassroots instances. In particular, the EWM expresses its solidarity to the appeal of the Italian Water Forum by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), against the legislative project of the Italian Government aimed to exclude public operators under public law from the government of water services. Same solidarity for other territorial struggles, i.e., mobilization in the Balkans against mining projects that threaten to compromise preservation of water resources.
During the Girona meeting, organisations from Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium and Serbia agreed that defending the WFD must be a top priority for 2026. Public operators, local authorities and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation were also present.
The EWM commits to thoroughly follow any developments around EU water norms (WFD, DWD, UWWTD, etc.), carefully monitoring enforcement and implementation and foresees potential interventions, where necessary, in order to guarantee the preservation of water resources in quantity and quality, especially in a context of increasing threat of water scarcity.
The EWM reiterates the importance of cost-efficient Nature based Solutions to cope with the impacts of extreme weather and climate-related events such as floods, fires or droughts.
The EWM also reiterates the urgency to react to pressure of lobbies aimed to relax the rules, regarding in particular: less severe limits and restrictions of some pollutants (microplastics, pesticides, heavy metals, etc.); delay in the implementation of the dispositions; attempts, in case of pollution, to charge the costs onto the community instead of imposing the payment by the polluter.
The EWM calls on EU institutions to be transparent, act according to the general interest rather than for the benefit of a few, respect the Rule of Law and under the principle of prevention, defend democracy and fight against any form of corruption, be it material or intellectual.
Water for Peace! Water is a universal common and can’t suffer privatisation, commodification and financialisation logics.
Governance should be transparent, public, participative and inclusive.
Solidarity between people and communities struggling in defense of human and life rights!
Halt Rearm Europe!
Download the full Final Declaration 2025 here.