Environment Agency

The European Commission on Thursday decided to refer Greece to the Court of Justice of the European Union for failing to provide updated flood risk and flood hazard maps as required by its floods directive. 

Every year, the European Environment Agency (EEA) compiles bathing water data gathered by local authorities across the 27 European Union member states, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Albania - measuring levels of bacteria from sewage and livestock. More than two thirds of sites are coastal beaches, with rivers and lakes making up the remainder.

The overwhelming majority of Greece's bathing waters met European Union water quality standards in 2017, according to the European Environment Agency.

In its annual report, the agency said that 95.9 percent of all existing coastal bathing waters are of excellent quality, behind Luxembourg (100 percent), Malta (98.9 percent) and Cyprus (97.3 percent).

428,000 Europeans from 41 countries have prematurely died of diseases caused by fine particle in the air in 2014, the European Environment Agency said yesterday.

Britain needs a 'complete rethink' of its flood defences after towns, cities and countryside across northern England were inundated when rivers broke their banks in recent days, a government agency said on Dec. 28.