EU Water Framework Directive versus Real Needs of Groundwater Management

Considerable financial, human and administrative reserves of the European Community are currently concentrated on the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). This implementation is hoped to positively change the approach to groundwater management in many countries; however, it probably does not have any significant impact on the issue of groundwater management optimization at the operational level. Taking into account the WFD requirements concerning the optimization of groundwater management, a methodology of groundwater resources reporting and balancing in catchment systems is proposed here. The entire discussion presented in this paper focuses on quantitative aspects of groundwater management.