The Resilience of Transboundary Water Governance Within the European Union: A Legal and Institutional Analysis

The most commonly used legal/institutional indicators of hydropolitical resilience are water quantity management, water quality protection, cooperation over planned measures with transboundary impacts, variability management and interstate dispute settlement. The application of these indicators to all four layers of transboundary water governance within the EU reveals that despite the overall positive performance of the European regime in global comparison significant structural deficiencies can be identified. These shortcoming can turn into critical vulnerabilities should the prevailing hydrological conditions of transboundary cooperation continue to change as a consequence of increased climate variability. The most important gaps relate to the absence of water quantity management and water allocation mechanisms, the limited management of hydrological variability in a transboundary context and the inadequate mechanisms of co-riparian dispute settlement.