Which international locations in Europe have the healthiest seashore, lake and river water?

Europe’s seashores, lakes and rivers proceed to attain extremely for water high quality, with the overwhelming majority of bathing websites assembly EU necessities, in accordance with the 2025 Bathing Water Report.

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From Ireland to Estonia and Cyprus, 96% of all European websites monitored meet the minimal high quality requirements and only one.5% had been rated as “poor”.

The bathing high quality of coastal waters is mostly higher in comparison with rivers and lakes and 88% of coastal bathing waters within the EU had been categorised as glorious, in comparison with 78% of inland bathing waters.

The report famous that this displays the traits of many inland waters in central Europe, that are made up of small lakes, ponds and low-flow rivers.

These water our bodies are extra inclined to short-term air pollution occasions linked to heavy rainfall or drought, significantly throughout summer season.

Bathing water high quality is classed as ‘excellent’, ‘good’, ‘sufficient’ or ‘poor’ based mostly on detected ranges of E. coli and intestinal enterococci — key indicators of faecal contamination that sign well being dangers.

According to the European Environment Agency (EEA), publicity to polluted bathing water can result in gastrointestinal sicknesses akin to abdomen upsets and diarrhoea, in addition to ear, eye and higher respiratory tract infections.

Where are one of the best swimming waters?

The nation with one of the best water high quality total was Cyprus, with 100% of its waters being categorised as glorious. This is adopted by Greece (97.1%), Bulgaria (96.9%) and Austria (96.5%).

Lithuania and Slovenia’s coastal waters had been additionally of fantastic high quality; nevertheless, their inland bathing waters dropped the general rating.

Regarding lakes, rivers, and ponds, the highest quality water was present in Austria and Finland, the place round 95% of inland water was categorised as glorious.

Denmark (94.3%), Luxembourg (94.1%) and Germany (91.5%) full the highest 5 greatest waters.

And the worst?

In three EU international locations — Estonia, the Netherlands and France — 3% or extra of bathing waters had been categorised as poor in 2025.

Albania had a 16.8% share of its waters thought-about glorious, the bottom of all European international locations.

Only 4 different international locations had lower than 70% of their waters glorious: Estonia (56.9%), Poland (58.7%), Hungary (64.0%) and Belgium (67.9%).

Considering solely inland water, the nation with the bottom water high quality was Spain. With over 11% of its rivers and lakes categorised as poor high quality, and solely 53.1% thought-about glorious, the bottom share.

Slovenia, Portugal and Croatia additionally confirmed the bottom inland bathing water high quality.

Rivers are tougher

River bathing waters stay significantly difficult, the report famous. Only 47% of round 1,200 designated river bathing websites throughout Europe achieved glorious high quality in 2025.

The report recognized fast urbanisation and air pollution through the Industrial Revolution as the primary elements for the degraded water high quality in lots of Europe’s rivers.

Some of the important thing elements affecting bathing water high quality in rivers embrace short-term air pollution occasions following heavy rainfall, together with mixed sewer overflows and stormwater runoff, air pollution from agriculture, and faecal inputs from wildlife and livestock with entry to riverbanks.

According to the EEA, the water high quality of many city rivers and water our bodies has progressively recovered with the help of European water insurance policies and river bathing is now potential in a number of European cities.