An Ambitious EU Chemicals Strategy and a Broad PFAS Restriction – a requisite for urban water resilience
This page provides contextual information about the roundtable discussion co-organised between Gothenburg European Office, EurEau and Svenskt Vatten as an EU Green Week Partner Event. The roundtable discussion was titled: “An ambitious EU Chemicals Strategy and a broad PFAS Restriction – a requisite for urban water resilience”.
About the roundtable
The roundtable discussion was held on the 4th of June 2024 and focused on upstream (control at source) measures, the Polluter Pays Principle, and a broad restriction on PFAS chemicals. We considered how ensuring an ambitious implementation of the EU Chemicals Strategy can help meet the zero-pollution ambition and increase coherence of EU water policy, whilst ensuring that we have enough safe and affordable water to fulfil all of society’s needs.
Gothenburg and PFAS – forever chemicals in the urban water cycle
Shortly before our event, the City of Gothenburg finalised our mass balance of PFAS11. The picture clearly illustrates the persistency of PFAS chemicals – and why downstream measures are not enough. Our workshop concluded that the case of Gothenburg illustrates the situation in many European cities.
The goals of our workshop were to discuss the following points with EU policy makers and local and regional authorities:
- current state of play with the PFAS restriction
- challenges faced by local wastewater and drinking water authorities due to PFAS in our water bodies
- sustainable alternatives to PFAS
After the event, Gothenburg European Office wrote this summary report of our key messages from the roundtable discussion. The report has been shared with representatives from both the European Commission and the European Parliament.