The study classifies selected EU environmental and climate policies according to their impacts on wetlands and their reliance on high-quality wetlands to meet their own aims. The picture that emerges is one of supportive nature and water policies undermined by counteracting sectoral policies. The Birds Directive and Habitats Directive, collectively the cornerstone of EU biodiversity law, mandate the protection and restoration of numerous wetland habitat types — from coastal salt marshes and seagrass meadows to mires, bogs and fens — and of wetland-dependent species such as the European otter, the European sturgeon and the marsh fritillary. Where the Natura 2000 network they establish is fully implemented, it has demonstrably slowed species decline and habitat loss compared with non-protected areas. Yet the latest reporting period shows how far objectives remain unmet: only 17% of protected freshwater habitats achieve good conservation status, and 80% of protected fish and 60% of amphibians reliant on these habitats are in poor or bad condition, with freshwater migratory fish abundance down 75% since 1975.

Water management legislation tells a similar story of high ambition and weak delivery. The Water Framework Directive, adopted in 2000, aims to achieve good status for all water bodies by 2027 at the latest, promoting an integrated approach that respects entire ecosystems. Its implementation would highly benefit European wetlands, which regulate water quality and ecosystem health. Yet only 37% of Europe’s surface water bodies achieved good or high ecological status in 2021, with the main pressures being hydrological modification — dams and channelization — and agricultural pollution. The Fitness Check of the Directive identified underestimated ecological timescales, ineffective integration of sectoral policies, and excessive use of exemptions by Member States as key weaknesses, alongside a lack of comparable, centrally stored European monitoring data that delays detection of emerging stressors.

The Floods Directive recognizes wetlands’ role in natural flood management, promoting their use as natural water retention areas that absorb and slowly release floodwater, and holds potential for a paradigm shift from flood protection to integrated flood risk management. That potential has not been realized: reliance on gray infrastructure such as dams and dikes remains the norm, and neither aquatic biodiversity nor ecosystem services are directly mentioned in the Directive’s text. Climate legislation adds another layer. The LULUCF Regulation governs greenhouse gas accounting for land use, land use change and forestry, setting a union target of net removals of 310 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030. Restoring drained peatlands as nature-based solutions has high potential for emission reductions, and reporting on emissions from managed wetlands will become mandatory in 2026. Yet the overall union target is unlikely to be met, and links with EU biodiversity policy remain weak.

Counteracting these supportive policies is the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, the biggest fund for land management in the Union. The analysis finds that the CAP needs significantly better targeting to reduce continued wetland damage. Intensive agriculture presents the most significant pressure for both surface and groundwaters in the EU, with little improvement since 2010, and hydrological modification for agricultural use, pollution and degrading management practices rank among the most severe pressures on protected wetland habitats. The newly introduced GAEC 2 standard aims to protect wetlands and peatlands by setting minimum conditions for direct payments, but it does not forbid continued drainage and ploughing of wetlands under agricultural use, and many Member States have exploited its flexibility to delay implementation until 2025 or set only weak national compliance criteria. Agri-environment-climate measures remain limited by small budgets and poor targeting, and the majority of CAP strategic plans have been assessed as insufficient for delivering biodiversity, climate and water objectives.

Renewable energy policy presents a second structural conflict. The Renewable Energy Directive pursues a binding 42.5% renewable share by 2030 and obliges Member States to designate renewable acceleration areas, while generalizing renewable energy as an overriding public interest — exempting projects from the usual Environmental Impact Assessment and subjecting them to the far less stringent Strategic Environmental Assessment. Hydropower expansion in particular can fragment rivers and disrupt wetland biodiversity, yet investments in hydropower are classified as environmentally sustainable under the EU Taxonomy Regulation, though experts suggest plants under 10 megawatts should be excluded due to their environmental impact. The analysis warns of a high potential to divert climate funds to gray infrastructure rather than nature-based solutions, locking in maladaptive practices.

Against this fragmented backdrop, the EU Nature Restoration Regulation, which entered into force in August 2024, represents a legislative milestone. It is the first EU-wide law prioritizing ecosystem restoration within and beyond Natura 2000, combining an overarching target — effective restoration measures covering at least 20% of land and sea by 2030 and all ecosystems in need by 2050 — with quantitative, time-bound targets for specific ecosystem types. Article 4 commits Member States to restoring at least 30% of habitats of community interest not in good condition by 2030, 60% by 2040 and 90% by 2050, covering all wetland habitat types designated under the Habitats Directive. Article 9 targets the removal of obsolete barriers to restore at least 25,000 kilometres of free-flowing rivers by 2030, defining connectivity in longitudinal, lateral and vertical terms — going beyond the Water Framework Directive’s longitudinal focus. Article 11 sets targets for drained peatlands in agricultural use, though only a fraction of mandated measures must involve rewetting.

The Regulation’s implementation architecture is designed to avoid the failures of its predecessors. Each Member State must submit a draft National Restoration Plan by 1 September 2026, identifying areas in need of restoration, specifying measures, financial resources and means of financing, and estimating co-benefits for climate mitigation and land degradation neutrality. The plans must also demonstrate synergies with sectoral policies such as forestry, agriculture and renewable energy — and indicate subsidies that would negatively affect implementation. By requiring this detail, the NRR aims to unify existing legislation, support the Nature Directives with deadlines and tools, and promote win-win scenarios for biodiversity, climate, disaster risk reduction and water resilience. Its adoption was hard-won: the original 2022 proposal was softened to gain support, a provisional trilogue agreement in November 2023 left adoption uncertain, and decisive votes passed only in February and June 2024, partly against political opposition fuelled by misinformation.

The political climate in which implementation now commences has shifted dramatically. The Green Deal is followed by a Clean Industrial Deal focused on competitiveness, and Omnibus packages launched throughout 2025 propose delaying, restricting or weakening many recently adopted Green Deal policies. The Commission’s proposal for the 2028–2034 Multiannual Financial Framework suggests a fundamental CAP reform lacking a ringfenced budget for agri-environmental schemes and replacing binding environmental standards with a more flexible farm stewardship system. Yet the case for upholding environmental ambitions remains as urgent as ever: Europe’s environment is declining across terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems, the European Climate Risk Assessment warns of ever more severe impacts on food security, health and infrastructure, and the State of Water report highlights the need to restore aquatic ecosystems and wetlands at landscape scale to buffer extremes, reduce flood risks and retain water in the landscape.

The analysis concludes that the NRR’s success hinges on political will, funding and cross-sector coherence, requiring a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to writing, funding and implementing National Restoration Plans. Wetlands offer a tangible example of multifunctionality — nature’s most effective water managers, as the EU Water Resilience Strategy calls them — yet their contributions are not sufficiently recognized in climate, energy and agriculture policy. To make full use of synergy potentials, prevent counteracting measures and spend resources efficiently, policy integration must be actively pursued across water management, coastal defence, spatial planning, agricultural subsidies, renewable energy and disaster risk reduction. Scaling up wetland restoration through holistic implementation of the NRR is one crucial and urgent step, but it must be complemented by systemic transformations in the sectors currently driving wetland degradation. A transformative change for wetlands is needed in Europe.

Subject of Research: Environmental policy

Article Title: Wetlands in the EU policy context

Article References: Klusmann, C., Brotherton, P., Schiller, T., Wulf, S., & Marsden, K. (2026). Wetlands in the EU policy context. Nature Conservation, 62, 317-335. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.62.163780

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/natureconservation.62.163780

Keywords: wetlands, EU policy, Nature Restoration Regulation, biodiversity, climate change, Common Agricultural Policy, water resilience, peatlands, policy, context, scientific research

The brief, titled Achieving Better Implementation of EU Policies by Restoring the Sponge Function, was produced by the sister projects SpongeBoost, SpongeWorks and SpongeScapes, all funded under the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme. Together, the three initiatives combine policy guidance, scientific evidence and real-world demonstration sites to advance the concept of sponge landscapes across Europe. Their central message is that the coming 2026 to 2027 window of EU policy processes represents a strategic opportunity to embed catchment-scale water retention measures into the legal and financial architecture of the Union, and that failing to do so would squander a low-cost chance to build resilience against both floods and droughts.

The scale of the underlying problem is stark. According to the policy brief, Europe has lost around 70 percent of its wetlands, roughly 50 percent of EU peatlands are degraded, and 70 percent of EU soils are not healthy. Each of these figures translates directly into reduced water retention. Drained peatlands release their stored carbon and water instead of holding both; compacted or eroded soils shed rainfall rather than infiltrating it; and lost wetlands no longer buffer the pulses of water that storms deliver to river systems. The combined effect is a continent in which droughts bite harder and floods run more destructive, a pattern that climate change is expected to intensify as precipitation becomes more variable and extreme.

The scientific logic behind sponge restoration rests on hydrological connectivity. Soils, wetlands, forests, grasslands and agricultural areas within a river catchment do not operate independently; they function as one interconnected water system. Water that infiltrates high in a catchment feeds groundwater and base flows downstream, while water that is blocked from infiltrating becomes surface runoff that must be carried by channels and flood defences. This is why the brief insists that sponge restoration must operate at the scale of entire landscapes and river catchments rather than through isolated, site-specific interventions. A single restored wetland or a patch of improved soil can deliver local benefits, but the hydrological payoff multiplies when measures are coordinated across the full upstream-to-downstream gradient.

Importantly, the authors are careful about what sponge restoration can and cannot achieve. The brief states plainly that restoring the sponge function is not a standalone solution for extreme weather events. A severe storm can overwhelm even a well-functioning landscape, and a prolonged drought can exhaust even deep stores of soil moisture. Instead, the brief positions sponge restoration as a low-regret, catchment-scale approach that complements other measures. The term low-regret is significant in policy terms: it describes interventions that deliver benefits across a wide range of future scenarios, so that decision-makers do not need precise predictions of how climate extremes will unfold before committing resources. Water retention, biodiversity, water quality and climate adaptation benefits all accrue regardless of which extreme event arrives next.

Political momentum for this agenda has been building. As support for nature-based solutions continues to grow, policymakers are increasingly recognising the need to enhance the natural sponge function of European landscapes, a shift reflected in the 2025 European Water Resilience Strategy. The strategy’s proposed Sponge Facility, highlighted in the brief, is conceived as a cross-directorate investment and delivery mechanism that would link finance, planning and monitoring for sponge measures. The policy brief argues that operationalising this facility is one of five priority actions needed to move sponge restoration from concept to implementation, giving it a durable institutional home rather than leaving it dependent on scattered project funding.

The five priority actions set out in the brief form a coherent implementation roadmap. First, sponge restoration should be embedded as a low-regret, catchment-scale solution in River Basin Management Plans and Flood Risk Management Plans under the Water Framework Directive and the Floods Directive, the two legal pillars that already structure water management across EU member states. Second, targeted sponge measures should be included in the consultation and planning processes related to implementation of the Drinking Water Directive, connecting source-water protection with upstream landscape management. Third, the European Water Resilience Strategy’s Sponge Facility should be operationalised as the cross-directorate mechanism described above. Fourth, EU instruments including the Common Agricultural Policy, Cohesion Policy, LULUCF and the Nature Restoration Regulation should be aligned around catchment-scale sponge targets rather than sector-specific interventions. Fifth, measurable sponge-function indicators covering soil health, water retention, flood attenuation and drought buffering should be introduced into EU monitoring and reporting systems.

The fourth and fifth actions deserve particular attention because they address a chronic weakness in European environmental governance: fragmentation. Farmers are subsidised through one policy instrument, nature restoration is mandated through another, and water quality is regulated through a third, with limited coordination between them. A catchment whose peatlands are rewetted under a restoration regulation while its upstream agricultural soils continue to be compacted under business-as-usual farming will never recover its full sponge capacity. By aligning the Common Agricultural Policy, Cohesion Policy, land use and forestry accounting, and nature restoration rules around shared catchment-scale targets, the brief proposes to make individual funding streams reinforce one another. Measurable indicators, meanwhile, would make progress visible and accountable, allowing the effectiveness of sponge measures to be tracked in the same way that emissions or water quality are currently monitored.

The potential co-benefits extend well beyond flood and drought risk. Restored wetlands and peatlands filter nutrients and sediments from water, improving quality for downstream users and reducing treatment costs. Rewetted organic soils stop emitting the carbon that drainage releases, contributing to climate mitigation alongside adaptation. Habitat restoration for wetland species follows almost automatically from hydrological recovery, supporting biodiversity commitments under the Nature Restoration Regulation. This bundling of benefits is precisely what makes sponge restoration attractive from a policy economics perspective: a single intervention portfolio addresses multiple directives and strategies simultaneously, and the low-regret framing means that even under uncertain climate futures the investment retains its value.

What happens next will depend on whether the recommendations are picked up in the 2026 to 2027 policy cycle that the brief identifies as decisive. The three projects behind the publication, SpongeBoost, SpongeScapes and SpongeWorks, continue to receive funding from Horizon Europe, with SpongeScapes and SpongeWorks additionally supported by UK Research and Innovation and HM Government. Their combined evidence base, spanning policy analysis and on-the-ground implementation, is intended to give national and EU decision-makers the technical justification for acting. If the five priority actions are adopted, Europe’s rivers, soils and wetlands could begin recovering the water-buffering capacity lost over centuries of drainage and land-use change. If they are not, the continent will continue to pay for that lost sponge function through emergency flood defences, drought relief and degraded water supplies, costs that the brief suggests are far higher than the price of restoring the landscape’s natural capacity to hold water in the first place.

Subject of Research: Restoring the natural water-retention sponge function of European landscapes through aligned EU policies

Article Title: New policy brief outlines how EU policies can better support sponge restoration

Article References: New policy brief outlines how EU policies can better support sponge restoration. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: sponge restoration, EU policy, water resilience, flood risk, drought, wetlands, soil health, nature-based solutions, river catchments, Water Framework Directive, Horizon Europe, climate adaptation