Technical guidance for deriving environmental quality standards

Following a request from the Commission, the Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks (SCHEER) reviewed the Guidance Document No. 27: 'Technical Guidance for Deriving Environmental Quality Standards' prepared by a collaborative framework (the Common Implementation Strategy) for the Water Framework Directive. The SCHEER concludes that the overall scientific quality of the proposed changes is an improvement to the earlier 2011 version. The SCHEER has a number of comments where more practical guidance can be provided or where the current state of knowledge is still insufficient or where it is not being fully utilised.