State of bathing water

Quality of bathing water - 2019 bathing season

To allow Europeans to make informed decisions on where to go to best enjoy Europe’s inland and coastal bathing sites, an annual assessment briefing has been prepared by the European Environment Agency (EEA) in cooperation with the European Commission's DG Environment. The briefing assesses the bathing water quality in all 28 EU Member States¹, as well as Albania and Switzerland, in the 2019 bathing water season and thereby gives an indication of the areas where the quality of bathing is expected to be good this year.

EEA briefing - European bathing water quality in 2019

• English
• French
• German

Details on all Member States bathing waters for the 2019 season can be found in the national bathing water reports:

Each report contains details on bathing water monitoring in the specific country and an assessment of the 2019 results and the trend in bathing water quality.

The EU summary report is based on bathing water data available up to mid May 2019.

• Data download: Bathing Water Directive - Status of bathing water 2019
• Archive: National reports for 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 , 2016,  2017 and 2018 bathing seasons
• National or regional websites for bathing water quality
• Bathing water photo gallery

Bathing water quality interactive map

We all want to know the quality of 'our' local bathing area, beach or lake, and whether it conforms to EU standards. Below you will find a map viewer that will allow you to view on-line the quality of the bathing water in the more than 22 000 coastal beaches and freshwater bathing waters across Europe.

By using the map viewer you can check the bathing water quality on an interactive map. It also documents how bathing waters have changed throughout Europe in recent years and provides a full summary of Europe’s bathing water quality in 2019. Go directly to the map viewer

More information

• More information on the Bathing Water Directives
• See also EU Commission's Bathing Water Homepage

1. These products present data from 2019 when the UK was still an EU Member State, therefore data about the UK bathing waters are included under ‘EU Member States’.