The European Commission is launching the new European Water Academy to strengthen water resource management. Its official launch will take place on September 21 at an event in Brussels, which will be streamed live. From that date onward, the Academy will begin its activities focused on knowledge-sharing, training, and cooperation regarding water challenges in Europe.
This initiative is part of the European Water Resilience Strategy, which serves as a framework for advancing toward more sustainable and resilient management of the continent’s water resources. The initiative will be led by the European Commission’s Joint Research Center (JRC) and will receive policy guidance from the Directorate-General for the Environment.
Key Points of the Water Resilience Strategy
Climate change, droughts, floods, pollution, and rising water demand are making the assurance of safe and available water resources one of Europe’s major environmental and economic challenges. That is why this strategy seeks to address these issues.
It highlights the need to improve water management, reduce water consumption, and increase water use efficiency, while strengthening European countries’ capacity to prevent and cope with extreme events such as droughts and floods.
One of its main objectives is to move toward a Europe where water is better protected and where citizens, businesses, and ecosystems can access this resource in a sustainable manner. To this end, the European Commission is committed to a combination of infrastructure investment, innovation, and the acceleration of digitalization and the use of AI, scientific knowledge, cooperation among Member States, and the effective enforcement of European regulations.
This strategy also aims to boost efficiency in sectors with high water consumption, encourage reuse, and promote technological solutions that enable smarter use of this resource. All of this is part of the goal of increasing Europe’s water resilience—that is, its ability to anticipate, respond to, and recover from water-related crises.
It is within this context that the European Water Academy has been established. The new Academy aims to contribute precisely to generating and sharing the knowledge needed to translate the roadmap’s objectives into concrete actions.
Launch Event
It will take place from 2:00 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. at the headquarters of the European Economic and Social Committee and the European Committee of the Regions in Brussels, although an online livestream is also planned.
Participation via livestream is open to the public and does not require prior registration. All information about the event is available at this link.
