With 588 votes in favor (23 against), the European Parliament, meeting in plenary session in Strasbourg, approved a text defining minimum standards of quality for recycled water intended for agricultural irrigation.
"By ensuring that treated wastewater can be reused more widely, especially in agriculture, water extraction from groundwater could be reduced," the European Parliament said in a statement. "Recovered water (that is, urban wastewater that has been processed in a recycling plant) will be used to irrigate food crops, processed food crops and non-food crops," the parliament said. "We have to move towards a circular economy, including the way we use and reuse water," said the rapporteur of the text, Italian MEP Simona Bonafè (S & D, left), worth 6.6 billion number of cubic meters of water that could potentially be recovered by 2025.
The adopted text is the starting position of the European Parliament in negotiations which must now take place with the EU Council, representing the Member States, which has not yet decided its own position
