Europe is flushing its water down the drain

This article is part of the Europe’s looming water crisis special report.

In some parts of the scenic, southern Italian region of Basilicata, up to 70 percent of the drinking water never reaches a tap.

Nestled in the arch of Italy’s boot, Basilicata’s coat of arms features undulating blue lines representing four major rivers which, technically, make the region water-rich. Many of its residents have depended on the local Camastra dam for decades.

Then came last summer.

Basilicata entered a period of uncharacteristically severe drought, draining the dam, depriving 29 municipalities of regular running water, affecting tens of thousands of people and pushing the Italian government to declare a state of emergency from the fall of 2024 to January of this year.

The fiasco shone a spotlight on a long-standing issue facing the region, exacerbating the crisis: Basilicata’s pipes leak by the bucket-load.

The region loses more than two-thirds of its water through a decrepit water network — ramping up to 70 percent in its capital Potenza, according to the Italian National Institute of Statistics.

The region is “going back to the Middle Ages because of a water crisis that’s not only and exclusively the effect of extreme heat and drought, but above all of years and years of insipient administrations toward a colander network and a system management made of patches and not structural interventions,” said Carmine Vaccaro, secretary of the Italian Union of Retired Workers in the midst of the crisis.

Basilicata is an extreme example of a Europe-wide problem. Decades of underinvestment in water infrastructure and mismanagement of rivers and aquifers are exacerbating the increasing water stress that faces many regions.

“[Basilicata’s] water infrastructure — like the rest of Southern Italy — dates back to the 1940s and 1950s,” Vera Corbelli, secretary general of the Southern Apennine District Basin Authority, told POLITICO. “Today, this infrastructure has reached, and in some case exceeded, its life span.”

“It follows that simply replacing the existing network isn’t viable in many respects, especially financially.”

As climate change bears down, bringing heatwaves, droughts and sudden bursts of torrential rain, much of Europe’s water infrastructure — increasingly unfit even for normal conditions — is dangerously underprepared for the coming storm.

In an attempt to fix that, the European Commission will come forward with an EU Water Resilience Strategy in June.

In order to protect the bloc’s public water supply, “a focus must be on fighting leakages and unwanted losses, supported by digital tools,” the EU executive writes in a leaked draft obtained by POLITICO.

But critics say the forthcoming strategy is too narrow. Leaky pipes are just one piece of a much larger puzzle, argue environmental groups and scientists, who want to see the EU funnel more money toward nature-based solutions.

Call the plumber

In Italy, leaky pipes are a national sore spot. A 2024 report from consumer association Federconsumatori warns that Italy’s water infrastructure is undergoing a “significant process of aging and deterioration,” especially in urban centers.

Over 60 percent of the nation’s pipes were laid more than 30 years ago, according to Federconsumatori, while 25 percent are more than 50 years old. The country’s municipal water networks lost just over 42 percent of their drinking water in 2022, according to a 2024 report from the Italian National Institute of Statistics.

“These leakages are very important,” said Mauro Grassi, an economist who has worked on water insecurity for previous Italian governments. “Very, very high losses.”

Italy is putting €1.9 billion in EU funds toward reducing water losses under the bloc’s €194 billion Recovery and Resilience Plan. Grassi wants to see the government invest more money in renewing and maintaining its water networks.

Corbelli, from the basin authority, stressed that any investments in Basilicata’s water network “must be targeted” using “new technologies to monitor and … identify the most vulnerable parts of a network.” Simply ripping out all the pipes would be too costly and disruptive.

Italy isn’t the only EU member with a plumbing problem.

Although there’s no official European methodology for measuring leakage, EU water services lobby EurEau has ranked EU countries based on all “distribution losses” which — on top of leakage — includes things like street cleaning and firefighting.

Bulgaria has the bloc’s highest losses at more than 60 percent. Its tenth-largest city, Shumen, loses up to 84 percent of its water, according to the latest national data published last year. The country’s public works minister, Ivan Ivanov, has said solving Bulgaria’s water issues is a “main task” for the government.

Ireland is next at just over 50 percent, although Irish Water says only 37 percent is due to leakage, and that they’re “on track” to reach 25 percent by 2030.

“It’s very slow because … our water infrastructure is under our towns and our cities, and so to try [to] manage and to fix leaks is very disruptive to just the day-to-day businesses and ongoings,” said Triona McGrath, research and policy lead at Ireland’s The Water Forum.

Romania’s water-loss rate comes in third at just over 40 percent.

Water-stressed by design

While some regions allow their drinking water to leak away, northern nations like Belgium are discovering what happens when a country spends decades trying to funnel rainwater to the sea as fast as possible.

Rainy Belgium faces an “extremely high level of water stress,” according to the World Resources Institute — coming in at 18th worldwide, behind San Marino and before Greece.

That’s due to several factors. The country depends on rainfall to replenish its water supplies, and water demand by industry is high, according the World Resources Institute’s Liz Saccoccia.

On top of that, though, most of Belgium’s rainwater runs straight into the sewers and disappears into the sea — by design.

Half a century ago, Belgium “didn’t have problems with too little water — we only had problems with too much water,” explains Erik Grietens, policy officer at Belgian environmental NGO Bond Beter Leefmilieu. “The result is that for 30, 40 years, the policy only was get the water away as fast as possible to the sea.”

The natural bends in West Flanders’ Gaverbeek stream, for example, were straightened out due to fears of flooding, whisking the water straight out to sea. There are similar examples across Germany and the Netherlands.

But now, as dry spells grow longer and more unpredictable, water stress has become a priority in Flanders too, exacerbated by a high population density and widespread urban paving that prevents water from being absorbed into the ground and replenishing water reserves.

“That’s why we are so high on these [global water stress ranking] lists,” Grietens said. “We basically have to completely change the policy from the last 30 years.”

Now, the province of West Flanders has started restoring the Gaverbeek to its natural course to make it more resistant to long periods of drought. The province is also stripping out the 5,000 square meters of 10-centimeter-thick concrete paving the stream, letting the water permeate the soil once again.

That’s part of the Flemish Blue Deal — the region’s “new approach to water management,” characterized by retaining water locally wherever possible with dedicated funding.

Although the new regional government is looking to cut funding to the project, Grietens hopes the EU can step in and cough up.

“This would be a big help.”

Make it rain

But there has been a shift in priorities at the EU level too.

The center-right European People’s Party has demanded that all mentions of the European Green Deal be removed from a European Parliament position paper on water resilience, while the European Commission is winding back green rules and putting issues like defense and trade ahead of the environment and climate-change preparedness.

Which opens up a billion-euro question: How much cash is the EU ready to put toward water resilience?

Water Europe is calling for €255 billion in water investments over the next six years to “protect Europe’s economy and ensure environmental sustainability.”

In its leaked water strategy, the Commission identifies a €23 billion annual investment gap to implement existing EU water legislation — without committing new EU funding. The next EU long-term budget for 2028-2034 “could be an opportunity to further support water resilience,” it writes.

Meanwhile, the European Investment Bank (EIB) will start a new “EU Water Programme” to scale up investments in the water sector, including on nature-based solutions. For now, the spending target has been left blank in the draft document.

Available EU funds “should be deployed quickly for investments aimed to reduce leakages by using digital tools, smart metering, and water efficiency enhancing technologies,” the Commission writes.

But with several investment priorities jostling for EU funds, center-right MEP Hildegard Bentele is worried water resilience might get squeezed out.

“There are so many investment needs, so we need to prioritize … Water has to be considered a bigger priority in investments — as important as energy,” said Bentele, chair of the Parliament’s Water Group, speaking at an event on water resilience in May.

Maltese Socialist & Democrat MEP Thomas Bajada, who penned a report on water resilience for the legislature, is pushing for a “dedicated funding line” in the next EU long-term budget.

But Codruţa Savu, the World Wide Fund for Nature’s policy officer for water resilience and climate change adaptation, is concerned that even if additional investments for water are secured, nature-based solutions might be given short shrift. Urgent language indicating dedicated investment is lacking in the Commission’s draft strategy, she said.

The “current water efficiency narrative is narrowly focused on pipes, data center, and competitiveness, but ignores the ecosystems that actually retain water,” she added. “If we keep treating water as just a resource to optimize, we’ll miss the point of resilience entirely.”

As Basilicata looks to safeguard itself from any further water crises by improving gray infrastructure and fixing its water network, Corbelli from the basin authority is also advocating change on a larger scale.

What the region needs is to build a “relationship geared toward optimizing water management,” she said. “A paradigm shift in our relationship with this resource is … fundamental.”