Study supporting the revision of the EU drinking water directive : evaluation report

The overall objective of this study is to assist the European Commission with the evaluation of DWD. To this end, the study assessed to what extent the provisions of the Directive have been effective, efficient, coherent and relevant and have provided value added at EU level. The evaluation covers the period 1998-2014. As no impact assessment had been carried out prior to the adoption of the 1998 DWD, the counterfactual has been defined as what might have occurred if the 1998 DWD had not been in place. This makes a quantitative analysis problematic as recognised by the EC Better Regulation Package, and the evaluation therefore mostly relies on qualitative, reasoned arguments about the likely contribution of the DWD to the changes observed. In order to carry out the evaluation, an intervention logic and a methodological framework was developed on the basis of five evaluation criteria: effectiveness, efficiency, coherence, relevance, and EU added value. Guided by a set of evaluation questions, a combination of research tools was used. These tools included a review of relevant documents and publications, collection and analysis of data from published sources, analysis of the responses provided by Member States and stakeholders to the online survey (5,875 completed responses and 56 position papers), analysis of the outcomes of the stakeholder conference (70 attendants) and, finally, an interview programme.