Right2Water

Right2Water is a campaign to commit the European Union and Member States to implement the human right to water and sanitation.[1]

It has three stated goals:

1. Guaranteed water and sanitation for all in Europe.
2. No liberalisation of water services.
3. Universal (Global) access to water and sanitation.

The European Citizens' Initiative] (ECI) represented more than 120 NGO and was supported by the German and Austrian trade unions.[2] On the 21 March 2013, it became the first European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) to collect more than a million signatures and they reached the minimum quota of signatures in seven countries on the 7 May 2013. It stopped the signature collection on the 7 September 2013, with a total of 1,857,605 signatures. The initiative was submitted to the European Commission in December 2013 and the public hearing took place on the 17 February 2014 at the European Parliament.[3] In March 2014, the Commission has adopted the Communication in response to the Right2Water initiative.[4] On the 1 July 2015 the Roadmap for the evaluation of the Drinking Water Directive has been published by the European Commission.[5]

In response, the European Parliament criticised the Commission for failing the meet the initiative's demands.[6] The report by Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan called on the Commission "to recognise that affordable access to water is a basic human right."[7]

In 2010, three years before the petition, Paris was the first European local entity to have concluded the remunicipalization process of water and sanitation, entrusted to Eau de Paris.[8]