For seven years now, the water sector has been involved in the process of compliance assessment of its environmental legislation with the EU acquis.

The assessment of compliance of BiH water legislation with 12 EU directives has been carried out this year through the EU project RENA (Regional Environmental Network for Accession), the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Water Management and Forestry being competent for the transposition of 8 out of these 12 directives and the country-level institutions for the rest of them.

The overall assessment is that no progress has been made in transposition of the EU directives in the field of environment and climate change in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as compared to the progress reports of 2008/2009.

As for the water sector, a certain amount of progress has been established in the transposition of EU directives in relation to the previous years of monitoring.

This in particular refers to the transposition of the Urban Waste Water Directive   91/271/EEC with 93% compliance achieved through the Regulation on the Requirements of Discharging Waste Water into Natural Recipients and Public Sanitation Systems (Official Journal of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, no: 4/12) enacted by the Federal Ministry of Environment and Tourism. Also, the compliance with the EU Water Framework Directive has been rated at 91%, while the compliance with EU Nitrates Directives stands at 60%.  

The transposition of the EU Floods Directive has been assessed this year for the first time. As a result of the adoption of the Regulation on Types and Elements of Plans on Adverse Water Effects (Official Journal of FBiH; no: 26/09), the compliance with this Directive stands at 71%. 

The following three Directives – Ground Water Directive 2006/118/EC, Fish Directive 2006/44/EC, Shellfish Directive 2006/113/EC – assessed for the first time this year, are in the initial phase of transposition.