Right2Water


Right2Water is a campaign to commit the European Union and Member States to implement the human right to water and sanitation.
It has three stated goals:
  1. Guaranteed water and sanitation for all in Europe.
  2. No liberalisation of water services.
  3. Universal access to water and sanitation.
On the 21 March 2013, it became the first European Citizens' Initiative 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. In March 2014, the Commission has adopted the Communication in response to the Right2Water initiative. On the 1 July 2015 the Roadmap for the evaluation of the Drinking Water Directive has been published by the European Commission.
In response, the European Parliament criticised the Commission for failing the meet the initiative's demands. The report by Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan called on the Commission "to recognise that affordable access to water is a basic human right."