EU law concerning collection and treatment of wastewater (sewage) has been dominated by the 1991 Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive. This legislation is still in force across the UK, even though there are significant questions about how well it is being implemented at present. In 2024 the EU has, however, adopted a completely revised directive which includes many changes meaning that EU law is now different from UK law. This represents significant divergence between the EU and UK.

Andrew Farmer, IEEP UK Associate, provides a detailed run-down of the new EU Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive and how it compares with existing law in the UK, particularly England, and provides commentary on the significance of this change as new policy and law is brought in in the UK.

The EU’s 2024 Urban Wastewater Directive is a major extension and revision of the earlier 1991 directive that the UK implemented whilst a member of the European Union. The 2024 directive involves significant changes to the collection and treatment of wastewater in the EU and also of storm water overflows. On top of this is there is a whole new range of provisions to monitor and check on general implementation and specific pollutants, which further represents a significant divergence from current UK law and practice.

The costs of implementing the new provisions will no doubt be significant in many EU Member States. In the UK there is debate about the costs to implement the provisions of the existing law (even though it is over 30 years old). If the UK were still in the EU, and had to implement this new directive, adding the costs of the new provisions in the 2024 directive would be a significant additional challenge to UK water companies, which are struggling to already comply with the 1991 directive (and, as the Office for Environmental Protection has shown resulting in problems to comply with the Water Framework Directive).

On the wider subject of EU/UK divergence, this new directive illustrates how broad such divergence can become in a short period of time. While one might imagine EU law becoming “stricter” and potentially leaving the UK behind, the 2024 directive is much more than this. Yes, its provisions on collection and treatment are much “stricter”, but it also adds many new provisions and takes the law on wastewater treatment into new areas – EPR for medicine and cosmetic producers for example.

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Photo by Ivan Bandura on Unsplash