Quality of swimming waters at Croatia’s tourist destinations keeps rising.
The average share of swimming waters of excellent quality has increased in Europe from 78 percent in 2011 to 84 percent in 2015, and the Croatian swimming waters are among the top. The report by the European Commission shows that 94.2 percent of Croatian swimming waters have received the “excellent” grade, reports May 26, 2016.
The European Environment Agency (EEA) and the European Commission published on Wednesday their annual report on the swimming water quality, which is traditionally being released before the start of the tourist season. It pertains to the European Union member states, as well as to Albania and Switzerland. The report contains the analysis of water samples that were collected at over 21,000 coastal and continental locations.
During 2015, more than 90 percent of swimming areas in eight EU member states had excellent quality water – in Luxembourg that was true for all of 11 monitored areas, in Cyprus 99.1 percent, 97.7 percent in Malta, 97.2 percent in Greece, 94.2 percent in Croatia, 90.6 percent in Italy, 90.2 percent in Germany and 90,2 percent in Austria.
The fact that not all swimming waters that were analyzed in Croatia have received an excellent grade does not mean that their quality is bad, but that the classification was not possible because of the insufficient number of samples. There are no swimming areas in Croatia with bad grades, and only a few have earned a "acceptable quality" description. According to the European Union’s directive related to the swimming waters, the quality of such water can be classified as „excellent”, „good”, „acceptable” or „bad”, depending on the recorded level of bacteria.
The quality of swimming waters Europe-wide in 2015 was marked as bad in only 385 cases. The share of the swimming waters with the „bad” grade has fallen to 1.6 percent in 2015, from 1.9 percent in 2014. The most swimming areas with bad water quality were found in Italy (95 swimming areas), France (95) and Spain (58). “However, an increasing number of swimming waters not only meets the minimal standards, but achieves the standards of excellence. In some cities people can even use swimming areas situated at the ports", said Hans Bruyninckx, the executive director of EEA-a.
