PIANC WFD Seminar: Navigation and the EU Water Framework Directive

On 31 January in Brussels, around 130 people attended the WFD seminar organized by PIANC, together with its partners in the WFD Navigation Task Group1 Footnote. The seminar was organized as part conference (providing participants with an overview of progress with WFD implementation) and part workshops, the latter enabling discussion of some of the as-yet unresolved WFD issues.
The morning session started with keynote presentations. They were then followed by a lively debate about environmental protection, the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and EU policy priorities. After lunch, three parallel workshops were held, dealing respectively with sediment management, hydromorphology, and the relationship between the WFD and EU maritime policy. Each workshop was introduced by a series of speakers (in total representing the EC, NGOs, river commissions, port authorities and research institutes) who ensured that the topic was covered from a variety of viewpoints.
In closing the conference Fritz Holzwarth, the German Water Director, remarked that it had been a useful and productive conference and he stressed the need for the navigation sector, the water community and the WFD competent authorities to continue to work together.