State of bathing water

Page Last modified 29 May 2024

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This page was archived on 29 May 2024 with reason: Content is outdated

Heading for your favourite beach? Is the bathing water clean? Europe has a great diversity of beautiful beaches and bathing areas, and each year millions of Europeans spend their weekends at their local beach or their holidays cooling down by the water. As this year's bathing season approaches, many citizens have a keen interest in the quality of bathing waters.

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Quality of bathing water - 2021 bathing season

To allow Europeans to make informed decisions on where to go to best enjoy Europe’s inland and coastal bathing sites, an annual assessment briefing has been prepared by the European Environment Agency (EEA) in cooperation with the European Commission's DG Environment. The briefing assesses the bathing water quality in all 27 EU Member States, as well as Albania and Switzerland, in the 2021 bathing water season and thereby gives an indication of the areas where the quality of bathing is expected to be good this year.

Details on all Member States bathing waters for the 2021 season can be found in the national bathing water reports:

Each report contains details on bathing water monitoring in the specific country and an assessment of the 2021 results and the trend in bathing water quality.

Austria	Estonia	Italy	Portugal
Belgium	Finland	Latvia	Romania
Bulgaria	France	Lithuania	Slovakia
Croatia	Germany	Luxembourg	Slovenia
Cyprus	Greece	Malta	Spain
Czechia	Hungary	(The) Netherlands	Sweden
Denmark	Ireland	Poland

Non EU countries:	Albania	Switzerland

Data download: Bathing Water Directive - Status of bathing water 2021

Archive: National reports for 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 , 2016, 2017, 2018 , 2019 and 2020 bathing seasons
National or regional websites for bathing water quality
Bathing water photo gallery

Bathing water quality interactive map

We all want to know the quality of 'our' local bathing area, beach or lake, and whether it conforms to EU standards. Below you will find a map viewer that will allow you to view on-line the quality of the bathing water in the almost 22 000 coastal beaches and freshwater bathing waters across Europe.

By using the map viewer you can check the bathing water quality on an interactive map. It also documents how bathing waters have changed throughout Europe in recent years and provides a full summary of Europe’s bathing water quality in 2021. Go directly to the map viewer