Proportion of bathing waters with excellent quality in European countries in 2021

The assessment covers 21,859 bathing waters in Europe that were reported to the EEA for the 2021 season. In the EU Member States, there were in total 21,551 bathing waters (Austria: 261, Belgium: 122, Bulgaria: 96, Croatia: 935, Cyprus: 120, Czechia: 155, Denmark: 1,031, Estonia: 65, Finland: 302, France: 3,355, Germany: 2,291, Greece: 1,683, Hungary: 274, Ireland: 148, Italy: 5,524, Latvia: 56, Lithuania: 120, Luxembourg: 17, Malta: 87, The Netherlands: 738, Poland: 672, Portugal: 652, Romania: 50, Slovakia: 32, Slovenia: 47, Spain: 2,261 and Sweden: 457). Outside the EU, 308 bathing waters were reported (Albania: 119 and Switzerland: 189). In Poland, only 423 out of 672 bathing waters were quality assessed which explains the low proportion of excellent quality in this country. The majority of them were newly identified and did not have complete sets of samples that would allow an assessment required by the BWD for the classification.