As a “framework directive”, the Water Framework Directive (WFD) seeks to bring together all individual acts of legislation and international conventions relating to water utilisation and water conservation. With the entry into force of the WFD, waters in the EU are to be managed in accordance with a single legal framework. A new aspect is
the fact that waters are no longer to be managed within the boundaries of administrative units (nation states, administrative districts etc.), but at the level of river basin districts (catchment areas). The goal of such management is to achieve good ecological status and good chemical status in the natural waters of the Community by 2015 orin the case of heavily modified water bodies, to achieve good ecological potential and
good chemical status.