Field trip

Field trip within the EU Twinning Project “Support to policy planning in water management sector”

The main objective of the project is to strengthen the capacities of the Republic Water Directorate, PWMC “Srbijavode” and PWMC “Vode Vojvodine”, as well as other relevant institutions, in order to implement the principles of integrated water management deriving from the EU Water Framework Directive, through the development of elements of the River Basin Management Plan. Established by the European Commission, twinning is the most important form of pre-accession assistance for institutional capacity building.

The specific goal of the project is to develop the River Basin Management Plan in the Republic of Serbia for the period of 2021-2027.

To achieve a ‘good ecological status’ is the main objective for all rivers in Europe. While the ecological status gets assessed on a regular basis in the EU member states, water monitoring in Serbia currently does not provide detailed information.

The objective of monitoring is to establish a coherent and comprehensive overview of water status within each river basin district and to allow classification of all surface water bodies into one of the five classes.

Biological monitoring is the core of EU-wide status assessment. In September, a team of 30 experts from Serbia and Germany will travel more than 1,000 km throughout Serbia. In total, water sampling will be carried out at 15 locations.

The team will gather comprehensive scientific information, strengthen cooperation among the

scientific community and increase public awareness of water protection and use. The information is essential in order to get an overview of the water quality needed to meet the requirements of “good status” according to the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) standards. Furthermore, it will help to allow a transnational comparison of results, e.g. on an international river like the Tisza.

Transnational cooperation between the countries that are the part of this project will continue, after the end of the project, in the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube (ICPDR) and other international organisations. For project results, background information and photos, please visit our website www.wfd-serbia.eu.