Brussels - Beaches in Bulgaria and Britain are getting cleaner, but Italy's standards have slipped to the point where more than half its fresh water bathing sites do not meet minimum standards, according to an annual EU survey.
The survey of water quality released on Thursday found that the number of Italian beaches on which bathing was banned had increased slightly and water quality fell generally. Only 46.4 percent of Italian freshwater bathing sites met the minimum standards, a drop of 19.4 percentage points from 2008.
"Italy has work to do," said European environment commissioner Janez Potocnik. "I don't know about the discrepancies, but I'm swimming on the other side."
According to the survey, just over nine of every 10 Bulgarian beaches - 91 percent in all - scored the highest benchmark for absence of faecal bacteria and pollutants in 2009, compared to just under 78 percent a year earlier.
The number of British beaches meeting the minimum standards improved slightly to 97.1 percent, following two years in which heavy rain caused sewers to overflow into rivers and the sea, and sank Britain to the bottom of the list.
"There is still more to be done to meet the new EU guideline targets by 2015," British environment and fisheries minister Richard Benyon said.
"I want water companies to be much more open about things like publicising when sewage has been discharged into bathing waters through combined sewage overflows."
Overall in Europe, 95.6 percent of beaches and 89.4 percent of inland bathing waters met the minimum water quality standard. This was a respective slip of 0.7 and 2.6 percentage points compared to a year earlier. - Reuters