The Water Framework Directive (WFD), whose basic aim was to create a legal back-ground for water bodies’ protection, undoubtedly affects all economic sectors. Being a specific and distinctly different water user, agriculture will have the greatest share in the implementation of WFD out of all sectors of national economy. This results from its special character (60% of the country area used by agriculture), large volume of water consumed by evapotranspiration, diffuse pollution etc. Implementation of WFD will call for undertaking of many activities to restrict an unfavourable im-pact of agriculture on water resources and water related ecosystems. It is assumed that agriculture should also protect water resources. Accomplishment of this task imposes significant changes in the land use of river basins. Water management can be an essential factor deciding about the sustainable development of rural areas and biological diversity of agricultural landscape. Actions undertaken so far to implement the WFD are mainly limited to the protection of water quality from agricultural pol-lution. It is also necessary to undertake implementation of other aims of WFD. This refers especially to the provision of good hydromorphological status of water bodies, protection of water related eco-systems and effective water use.

The article presents the issues related to ecological security of the Baltic Sea. The issue was taken from the perspective of Poland as one of the Baltic States, and also as a Member State of the European Union. The authors discussed the mechanisms and legal instruments which are crucial for the ecological security of the Baltic Sea (i.e. Helsinki Convention of 1974, or Agenda 21 for the Baltic Sea Region “Baltic 21”). The importance of cross-border cooperation has also been emphasized as an essential element of the security policy in the Baltic Sea area. The article also indicated threats to the protection of Baltic waters, among others, eutrophication.

The very wet conditions of recent years in Europe have made it clear that measures will have to be taken in this century to prevent flooding. The question is how to manage groundwater in order to reduce the anticipated increased hydrological risk. Furthermore the surface water quality in the Netherlands is insufficient to meet the standards of the Water Framework Directive. The required improvements are difficult to reach, because the diffuse loads of nutrients from agricultural land can not be easily reduced. This demands for innovative solutions with respect to improve the surface wa-ter quality. In this pilot study the focus is on the purification in reed fields and use it as well to reduce the effects of the anticipated climate change. An experimental evidence on a practical scale is lacking and therefore in the woodland area of Lankheet in the eastern part of the Netherlands, 3 ha has been planted with reeds to purify the river water. The aim of the study is further to store the purified water in the groundwater in order to reduce climate change effects. For the hydrological situation a scenario study was set up, using a regional hydrological model to simulate the groundwater flow together with the water flow in a network of water courses. The analysis will give knowledge on the multifunc-tional use of such a system.

In order to maintain and improve water quality, man has an increasing need to understand the relations among basin land use and in stream water quality. Being concerned about quality and quantity status of European waters European Union has adopted Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EU). The process of pressure and impact analyses and water status assessment is termed, in short, as “first characterisation” of water bodies. In accordance to WFD programmes of measures have to be developed by 2009. In WFD programmes existing measures for water protection directed by other EU directives such are Nitrate, Urban Waste Water, Dangerous Substances and IPPC will be further developed and new added. In the paper, we describe the first characterisation of the Slovene waters and show cross compliance of the Nitrate and Water Framework Directives in Slovenia