According to a report published by the European Environment Agency on Tuesday, 83 percent of water samples from Finnish swimming beaches were rated as pristine. The samples included water from lakes, rivers and seashores.
Cyprus received a pristine rating for all its samples, as did land-locked Luxemburg. They were followed by Malta (97%), newcomer Croatia (95%), Greece (93%), Germany (88%), Portugal (87%) and Italy (85%). Finland was tied with Spain, both at 83 percent.
Meanwhile Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK had the poorest ratings, with “non-compliant” ratings for 12 percent, seven percent and six percent of sites respectively. The average figure EU-wide was two percent, an improvement from the previous study in 2011. Only about one in 10 beaches in these three countries was rated as clean.
Lakes becoming cleaner
Nearly 70 percent of Finnish coastal water samples were rated as pristine, with 14.5 percent good and 2.4 percent satisfactory. These figures were down incrementally from previous years, but no beaches had to be closed due to unsanitary water.
On the other hand, inland waters were significantly cleaner than in the past. The pristine rating went to 88.2 percent of samples, up by around eight percent since 2011.
The European Environment Agency gathered data last year from 22,000 sites in the 27 EU states plus Croatia, which joins on July 1, and Switzerland.