Towards flood risk management in the EU: State of affairs with examples from various European countries

Abstract On 27 June 2006 the Council of the European Union reached political agreement on a draft directive on the assessment and management of flood risks. This directive prescribes approaches and procedures which should be met by the member states. The website of the EU on this directive links to another EU‐initiative, the Integrated Project FLOODsite, which aims at providing methodologies for flood risk analysis and management. Obviously, the directive and the IP emerged in a common but much larger context of public and scientific debate on a more integrated and coordinated approach to dealing with flood risks. In this paper we briefly discuss this context and examine a few national cases in order to find out whether flood risk management is already common practice or is still in its infancy, or whether it involves merely good intentions. We base this examination primarily on our experiences within FLOODsite and on presentations held within the special session on River Flood Risk Management which was organised by The Netherlands Centre for River Studies (NCR) during the ISDF3 conference in May 2005. This paper goes into the similarities and differences between some national approaches and tries to place them in a cultural context. It appears that the seemingly most sophisticated management policies do not automatically imply the most comprehensive flood risk management approach. But the intention to evolve from flood management into flood risk management is evident and promising.