The Office welcomes the initiative and underlines the importance of ensuring that any regulatory changes strengthen, rather than weaken, environmental and public health protections in the EU.

The submission places the revision in the wider context of EU efforts to secure critical raw materials and advance the green transition. While these policies can support economic resilience, the contribution stresses that water governance reforms must avoid negative human rights impacts, particularly for vulnerable groups such as Indigenous Peoples and rural communities.

At the heart of the contribution is a call to adopt a human rights-based approach to water governance. UN Human Rights highlights that water pollution, scarcity, and climate-related disasters already undermine a wide range of rights, including the rights to life, health, food, and a healthy environment. To address these challenges, OHCHR makes three key recommendations:

• Address the human rights implication of water pollution, water scarcity, water-related disasters and the degradation of aquatic environment.
• Ensure the full and effective realization of the human right to water by adopting a holistic approach that incorporates all of its normative elements—availability, quality, accessibility, affordability, and acceptability. This requires avoiding a fragmented or overly narrow focus on accessibility alone and explicitly integrating the affordability dimension.
• Ensure that human rights impact assessments are systematically conducted at all stages of large-scale projects, functioning as an ongoing learning process to guide decision-making and improve outcomes for future projects.

For more information, read the full contribution.