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According to Article 6 and Annex IV of the WFD, Member States shall ensure the establishment of a register or registers of all areas lying within each RBD which have been designated as requiring special protection under specific Community legislation for the protection of their surface water and groundwater, or for the conservation of habitats and species directly depending on water, including the protection of Natura 2000 sites and economically significant aquatic species (e.g. shellfish).

A summary of the register of Protected Areas should be part of the RBMPs, including maps indicating the location of each Protected Area and a description of the Community, national or local legislation under which the Protected Areas have been designated. It is expected that all Protected Areas will be reported under the surface water body (SWB) and groundwater body (GWB) schemas, through their links to the surface and groundwater bodies.

The relevant EU legislation for the protection of water with more stringent objectives includes the following directives:

• Drinking Water Directive (80/778/EEC, as amended by Directive 98/83/EC).
• Shellfish Directive (2006/113/EC).
• Freshwater Fish Directive (2006/44/EC).
• Bathing Water Directive (2006/7/EC)¹¹.
• Nitrates Directive (91/676/EEC)⁹.
• Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (91/271/EEC)⁸.
• Birds Directive (2009/147/EC).
• Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC).

The Freshwater Fish Directive and the Shellfish Directive were repealed on 22 December 2013. According to the WFD, the level of protection should be maintained through the inclusion of the designated areas as Protected Areas under WFD. The necessary additional objectives and measures should be included in the RBMPs and PoMs.

For water bodies which are designated as Protected Areas, the Environmental Objectives set are beyond good status, as more stringent objectives have been set for those areas in the relevant Community legislation.

Annex VII (7)(1) of the WFD requires that the RBMPs contain ‘a summary of the measures required implementing Community legislation for the protection of water’. The additional measures for Protected Areas should be an integral part of the RBMPs in order to ensure that the requirements of those Protected Areas are included in the overall management of the RBDs and to ensure the coherence of the entire water planning with the objectives already established by other Community and national legislation.

Article 4.1(c) of the WFD states that ‘Member States shall achieve compliance with any standards and objectives at the latest 15 years after the date of entry into force of this Directive, unless otherwise specified in the Community legislation under which the individual Protected Areas have been established’. Therefore, water bodies in the Protected Areas must be of good status by 2015 at the latest, and earlier if required by another piece of Community legislation. If a water body is not of good status then it would be expected that an exemption under Article 4.4 of the WFD has been applied.

The additional measures can be of the same nature as those for the WFD (e.g. measures to reduce nitrogen loss from agriculture, or measures to improve the hydromorphological status in a river) but they need to reach a higher level of improvement of status. Alternatively, they may need to address different aspects of pollution which are not included in the WFD definition of good status (e.g. microbiological standards for the protection of shellfish and bathing waters). There can also be different kinds of measures targeted towards the specific objectives for the protection of the area.

As with any other WFD Environmental Objective, exemptions may apply provided the conditions in the relevant Articles are fulfilled. In the case of Protected Areas, it needs to be ensured that the WFD exemptions do not undermine the objectives under the relevant legislation. Reporting of exemptions linked to Protected Areas refer only to the additional objectives set (e.g. based on Article 4(1)(c). Exemptions from the WFD Environmental Objectives in Articles 4(1)(a) and 4(1)b are reported in the context of the reporting of the relevant status of surface or groundwater (see relevant parts of sections 2 and 3).