Seasonal water scarcity conditions across Europe, measured by the water exploitation index plus (WEI+) for sub river basins, summer 2022

The seasonal water exploitation index plus (WEI+) provides a measure of total water consumption as a percentage of the renewable freshwater resources available for the European river basins at subunit level. Summer is defined as a calendar quarter on the map: July-September.
WEI+ results for EU Member States, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland are presented at the subunit level, while for Italy, they are shown at the river basin level. For Türkiye and the Western Balkan cooperating countries, results are provided at the country level due to the lack of spatial data on river basins and subunits.
The EEA calculates the Water Exploitation Index for European river basins using a consistent approach for Renewable Water Resources (RWR). Due to limited data availability at the European level, the EEA applies significant gap filling, which may also result in differences from national estimates. In particular, Italy has noted that, due to the approach used by EEA for RWR, the pan-European index does not accurately reflect the detailed water stress conditions in its river basins.

This visualization was originally used in:

EEA, 2025, ‘Water scarcity conditions in Europe’ (https://www.eea.europa.eu/ims/use-of-freshwater-resources-in-europe-1) accessed 20 January 2025.