Expoapa 2025 Bucharest High-level regional meeting with EU Commissioners, strong messages to stakeholders and decision-makers
Dr. Károly Kovács, PhD, Chairman of the Hungarian Water Association, President of the Hungarian Water Partnership, former President of the European Water Association, as well as founder of Pureco, participated in EXPOAPA 2025 in Bucharest. On June 24th, he took part in a high-level regional roundtable discussion on “Water Resilience in Eastern Europe,” held within the framework of the newly launched European Water Resilience Strategy.
Chaired by European Commissioner Jessika Roswall, the event brought together policymakers, experts, and representatives from the water sector across the Eastern European region. The discussions focused on growing challenges, including water scarcity, pollution, the impacts of climate change, and the increasing pressure on water infrastructure—issues that are particularly acute in Eastern Europe.
From left to right: Arthur Guchet EWA Secretary General, Jessica Roswall, Commissioner responsible for environment, water resilience and a competitive circular economy, Katherina Schilling, IAWD MD and Dr Karoly Kovacs, Chairman of the Hungarian Water Association and former president of the European Water Association
The discussions revealed strong conflicts based on the challenges in the region and emphasised the urgent need for resilience, and its main pillars, such as:
restoring and protecting the water cycle
building a water-smart economy in collaboration with all stakeholders
ensuring clean and affordable water and sanitation for all, at all times
empowering citizens for water resilience
During the plenary and roundtable discussions, Dr Kovács had the opportunity to present findings and concerns raised within the Hungarian Water Association and the European Water Association. Namely, how can we build a water-smart economy involving all actors, if no one, neither decision-makers nor stakeholders, has access to transparent and reliable information on the true value and costs of water?
This includes:
resource costs,
infrastructure and service costs,
stormwater management-related expenditures,
environmental costs,
costs of non-action?
And all this due to the missing definition and guideline on how to calculate full cost recovery - a basic principle of the WFD-, and how to enforce polluter pays principles without the knowledge of what to pay by the users and polluters!!! How to restore and protect the water cycle when, due to the undervaluation and mispricing of water and related public services, the reuse of treated wastewater, and rainwater utilisation bring no or insufficient cost recovery for private investments.
One pillar where we can share "good news" is concerning affordability - the least amount within the household expenditure is paid for public water services!
Based on national and international statistics, less than 2% of all income categories. Large-scale international and national research shows that citizens would be ready and willing to pay more for water services. There is a declared readiness for solidarity towards future generations by paying more today for future water security - resilient water infrastructure. The overwhelming majority of stakeholders (>90%) would be ready to pay as much for water as for telecommunication (halfway bad news: they do not know that they actually pay 3 times less for water)
To support the development of water water-smart economy, Dr Kovács suggested and offered several concrete measures:
supporting tools (Dynamic Cost Comparison Calculation - DCC - guide) developed and adopted by the European Water Association (EWA) for the financially smart water management decisions.
introduction of water credits for the use of stormwater: for the 25-fold reduction of rain and stormwater-related urban pollution discharge, for climate adaptation and prevention (cooling effect) 1m3=700KWh energy saving) (ROI within 1 Year)
professional capacity building and public awareness campaigns supported by the professional water associations
Jessica Roswall, Commissioner, also welcomed the offered connections of EWA on international cooperation to the African (AfWASA) and Asian (ASEM WATER) partners.
