The name “ENMaR  - European Network of Municipalities and Rivers" summarized the main idea of the project: a network of municipalities in Europe and rivers. From 2005 to 2007 ENMaR compared the impacts of the EC Water Framework Directive (WFD) in different European regions. Differences, similarities, problems and possibilities during the implementation of the WFD on local level have been pointed out. The locally concerned, i.e. the municipalities and other local stakeholders have been involved. Therefore a network from regional networks  has been established.

ENMaR discussed the consequences in the different European regions from the long-term perspective of the WFD and the potential to benefit from each other. However ENMaR followed the holistic approach of the WFD regarding contents. Topics, which are crucial for regional development as well,  such as spatial planning, water services, tourism, and agriculture and forestry have been the core areas of the technical work.
By extensive information and technical support the municipalities and regions should be enabled to arrange their water services in a more sustainable way, to actively take part in local river basin management, to plan and decide integrative and interdisciplinary in spatial planning, to positively use an improvement of the water quality in the sense of the own touristy marketing and to affect the impacts of agriculture and forestry on water in a sense of quality improvement. Good examples and communication should create more transparency and positive results for the regional development.

ENMaR  established an interregional network, in which positive activities have been identified and multiplied and common ideas have be developed beyond that; on the one hand in order to learn from each other and on the other hand to prevent double work.

Who did what?

The German lead partner, U.A.N. was responsible for the overall organisation of the project, i.e. management and co-ordination. The further six partners were responsible for the five core areas. The topic water services was led by the German partner OOWV (Water Board of Oldenburg and East Frisia), the Spanish partner University of Santiago de Compostela and the Swedish Emåförbundet (Emån Union) were responsible for agriculture and forestry. Vides Projekti from Latvia was dealing mainly with tourism and the topic spatial planning was covered primarily by the English partners Mersey Basin Campaign and the University of Manchester.

In the five European partner regions, characterised by the river basins Gauja, Emån, Mersey, Miño and Weser, the project partners organised regional workshops on the five mentioned core areas. The results from those events have been evaluated on project partner level and disseminated to the municipalities and local stakeholders by newsletters, a manual and as workshop minutes on this web site. This was our contribution to the very substantial aspect of the public participation.

What is the WFD?

This European directive, which is in force since 2000, has the objective to create a framework for the protection of the surface waters, the transitional and coastal waters, and the groundwater. All waters are supposed to be in a good (ecological) status by the year 2015. Beyond that the WFD demands to integrate the protection and the sustainable management of water more effectively into other fields of policy in the community, as e.g. in the agriculture, the regional policy and the tourism.

Therefore it could contribute to co-operations between the Member States within other ranges, among other things according to the European concept of regional development. This approach corresponded in some ideas to the EU funding program Interreg IIIC, which was co-financing the project. Interreg IIIC had to the objective to improve the effectiveness of policies and instruments for the regional development and the regional co-operation by interregional co-operation and comprehensive experience and information exchange. Further on in the preamble of the WFD, which were partly also consideration reasons for this project, it is said: "There are diverse conditions and needs in the Community which require different specific solutions. This diversity should be taken into account in the planning and execution of measures to ensure protection and sustainable use of water in the framework of the river basin. Decisions should be taken as close as possible to the locations where water is affected or used. Priority should be given to action within the responsibility of Member States through the drawing up of programmes of measures adjusted to regional and local conditions." The project ENMaR tackled regional conditions, different situations, regional development, involvement, and/or integration with other fields of policy and interregional co-operation. ENMaR tried to point out synergies between the WFD on the local level and regional development.