Politics, Scale and the EU Water Framework Directive

This chapter examines the European Union Water Framework Directive (EUWFD) as a hybrid form of territoriality (Sidaway 2006) and a largely unnoticed politics of scale that is changing the political geography of the European Union (Moss and Newig 2010). It argues that intellectual debates about the rescaling of governance in the EU have appropriately focused on monetary policy, social issues, migration and citizenship, but have neglected what may amount to the most far-reaching redrawing of political-administrative boundaries according to environmental criteria: transboundary river basin districts created under the EUWFD. The management of water resources in the EU provides an example of scalar politics that at least suggests a nascent form of ‘post-sovereign environmental governance’ (Karkkainen 2004).