Water Framework Directive New Peer-Review Mechanism
Updated : 19/03/2015
The consortium, formed by International Office for Water (France-leader partner), the National Institute of Hydrology and Water Management (Romania) and the Mediterranean Network of Basin Organizations Secretariat (Spain), was selected by the DG Environment of the European Commission in September 2014 for setting up the Peer-Review Mechanism, and taking care of its secretariat for the next 2 years.
The objective is to set up a simple, voluntary and targeted system to allow mutual learning between peers about WFD implementation and participative river basin management planning.
The main people involved will be practitioners from River Basin District Authorities responsible for the implementation of the WFD, which will voluntarily submit issues related to River Basin Management Plans to the review performed by experts from other Member States.
The final output of this new mechanism is the improvement of the WFD implementation in River Basin Districts (RBD) by sharing experience involving various European Member States.
It responds to the assessment of River Basin Management Plans made by the European Commission across Europe that has shown significant differences in implementation among countries.
The impact assessment, accompanying the Blueprint, states that Peer Review (…) has proven to be an effective process in other areas of EU law.
The sharing of experience between colleagues allows for a problem-solving approach to be taken.
Under the Common Implementation Strategy (CIS), the peer review mechanism allows disseminating the experience of the best performing countries to help improving implementation in Member States or Basin Authorities willing to be reviewed.
The steps of the setting up of a Peer-Review Mechanism are as follows:
Step 1: Launching of the call for expression of interest from early 2015 for, on the one side, the identification of the Basin District Authorities willing to have their tools reviewed and, on the other side, voluntary practitioners willing to contribute to the peer review based on their Europass Curriculum Vitae and competence field.
Step 2: Development of terms of references for the proposed actions in the selected voluntary Districts.
Step 3: First peer-reviews performed and organization of a practical workshop on specific topics in spring 2015.
Step 4: Continuation of Peer-Reviews until 2016 and elaboration of lessons learnt documents
All materials related to the Peer Review Mechanism can be found on the project
For more information: