European Community Water Policy Standards: Locked in or Watered Down?

By any measure, European Community (EC) water policy has been very poorly implemented by the Member States, and lacks self‐consistency in some key respects and a sound scientific foundation. The conventional wisdom is that policies decided collectively tend towards the lowest common denominator of state preferences. But recent experience in the water sector suggests that directives decided by unanimity are nonetheless extremely difficult to reform once they become embedded in national political systems, even when they create enormous political problems for Member States and are outdated scientifically. Taking as an example the United Kingdom (UK) government’s handling of the directives on bathing and drinking water, this article shows how institutions have gradually hemmed in decision‐makers, locking states into a policy trajectory that most now regard as sub‐optimal in key respects.