Quality of European bathing waters 2022 - Report of the European Commission

252 sites (96.9%) were assessed as “excellent”, five sites as “good”. The quality of one bathing area (0.4 %) is classified as "sufficient". One bathing site (0.4 %) could not yet be assessed due to a data series, which is still too short. This means that in all bathing sites examined in Austria the strict requirements of the EU Bathing Water Directive have been complied with. The 260 bathing sites examined in Austria in 2022 are divided according to Federal Provinces as follows: Burgenland 20, Carinthia 32, Lower Austria 28, Upper Austria 43, Salzburg 37, Styria 32, Tyrol 35, Vorarlberg 16, and Vienna 17.

The bodies of water with the most analysed sites were Lake Constance in Vorarlberg with ten sites, the New Danube in Vienna with nine sites and the Old Danube in Vienna, Lake Neusiedl in Burgenland and Lake Attersee in Upper Austria with seven sites each.

Due to this result, Austria is now, with a very high share of “excellent” sites in the ranking of a total of 29 countries recorded behind Cyprus on place 2. Thus Austria is by far the best ranking country of all countries whose bathing water sites are exclusively on inland waters. Apart from the 27 EU Member States the bathing water quality of Switzerland and Albania were examined according to the same quality requirements. In total 22,000 sites were examined in these 29 countries. The average value of the share of bathing water sites whose quality was assessed as “excellent” amounts to 85.5 %.

The evaluation of the results on bathing water quality has been carried out according to adapted quality parameters and according to an adapted evaluation mode since 2013.

• For the assessment, two hygiene parameters “E.coli” and “intestinal enterococci” are used.
• The annual assessment of the bathing water quality takes place on the basis of the data of the last four bathing seasons.
• The quality classifications are based on four grades “excellent” “good” “sufficient” and “poor”.

The legal basis for the Europe-wide surveys, whose results are published every year by the European Commission at the beginning of summer, is provided by Directive No 2006/7/EC concerning the “management of bathing water quality”.

In Austria the implementation the Bathing Water Directive falls within the competence of the Federal Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Care, and Consumer Protection.