This twinning has consisted in two years of co-operation between Polish and French experts who are daily facing with WFD implementation in their country, at national, regional or basin level. The work in common – consisting in the exchange of opinions and experiences – as well as the tests realised in practice have lead to the redaction of various thematic guidance documents developing recommendations and methodologies in order to implement efficiently WFD in Poland. The elaborated documents contain the results of tests carried out in pilot river basins; in the Upper Vistula river basin for the planning process and in the Narew river basin for the cost-recovery analysis. Once the tests in pilot basins achieved, draft versions of thematic guidance documents were presented and discussed in the frame of regional workshops, of the working groups’ meetings at also at the Technical Committee’s sessions.
In the presented planning process two planning stages can be distinguished quite clearly:
- Refining of the characterisation with the baseline scenario and risk assessment concluded by the identification of the main issues of the water management (realisation by the end of the year 2007)
- Process of the development of the programme of measures and of the water management plan (realisation by the end of the year 2009).
The present guidelines and recommendations cover this part of the planning process that directly serves the establishment of the programme of measures but at the same time “consumes” the previously elaborated typology of waters and the refined identification of important anthropogenic impacts on waters with the evaluation of their consequences. The following activities are described in form of guidelines recommendations:
- Elaboration of the refined baseline scenario
- Identification of artificial and heavily modified water bodies
- Refining of assessment of risk of failure to meet the environmental objectives
- Definition of the main issues of water management
- Elaboration of programme of measures through a step by step approach.