About 93.3 per cent of Bulgaria’s coastal bathing waters met European Union standards in 2008, an improvement of more than three per cent on the previous year, according to an European Environment Agency report released on June 11 2009.
 
The report said that in 2008, six bathing waters did not comply with mandatory values. An interactive map showed red dots, indicating non-compliance, at beaches north and south of the Black Sea city of Varna.
 
There were no bans on swimming in any areas covered by the report in 2008.
 
The report said that information on bathing water quality was made available through the media and was passed on guests at major seaside hotels.
 
Bulgaria had a plan to make all urban waste water treatment comply with a European Commission directive. The report said that there were 37 waste water treatment plants in the Black Sea region, which is classified as a sensitive area. Of these plants, 32 were operational.
 
Twenty-five new waste water treatment plants are to be built in the Black Sea region by the end of 2014.
 
The report said that the estimate of the necessary investment costs to build the waste water collection systems and have the treatment plants comply with the directive were estimated at 2.2 billion euro for the whole country, and full implementation of the directive was expected to achieved by the end of 2014.
 
The European Commission said in a statement on June 11 that the annual bathing water report for the EU showed that the large majority of bathing sites across the 27-member bloc met EU hygiene standards in 2008.
 
During the 2008 bathing season, about 96 per cent of coastal bathing areas and 92 per cent of bathing sites in rivers and lakes in the EU complied with minimum standards.
 
Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas said: "High quality bathing water is essential for the well-being of European citizens and the environment – and this goes for all other bodies of water too. I am pleased to see that the overall quality of water in bathing areas is improving throughout the Union."
 
Professor Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director of the European Environment Agency, added, "Information sources like this report and our web-based viewing tools enable citizens not only to check the quality of the bathing water in their local community or holiday destination, but also to allow them to get more actively involved in the protection of their environment."
 
In 2008 the number of bathing waters monitored increased by about 75 sites.
 
Of the 21 400 bathing areas monitored throughout the EU in 2008, two thirds were on the coast and the rest were along rivers and lakes.
 
The largest number of coastal bathing waters can be found in Italy, Greece, France, Spain and Denmark while Germany and France have the highest number of inland bathing waters .
The overall quality of bathing waters in the EU has markedly improved since 1990.
 
Compliance with mandatory values ( minimum quality requirements) increased over the 1990 to 2008 period from 80 per cent to 96 per cent and from 52 per cent to 92 per cent in coastal and inland waters respectively.
 
Only Bulgaria, France and Greece had more than 95 per cent of inland bathing waters complying with mandatory values, with 100 per cent compliance for the three Bulgarian and six Greek inland bathing waters.
 
In the Black Sea region, 138 coastal and 937 inland bathing waters were reported during the 2008 bathing season.
 
There are only two EU member states on the Black Sea: Bulgaria and Romania. Both are
comparatively new member states and started reporting the quality of their bathing waters in 2007.
 
About 94.9 per cent of bathing areas complied with the mandatory quality values, which was slightly lower than the European average of 96.3 per cent. The compliance rates were 98 per cent in Romania and 93.3 per cent in Bulgaria.
 
Compliance with the more stringent guide values stood at 51.4 per cent, markedly below the European average of 88.6 per cent. Only one bathing site in Romania met the guide values compared to 78.7 per cent of sites in Bulgaria.
 
Countries where more than 80 per cent of bathing waters with guide water quality are Italy (86 per cent), Finland (85.9 per cent), Sweden (85.5 per cent), Portugal (80.9 per cent) and Germany (80.8 per cent).
 
There are eight countries with a significant number of non-compliant bathing waters.
 
These are France (118 or 3.6 per cent of all bathing waters), Italy (47 or 0.8 per cent of all bathing waters), Poland (46 or 14.4 per cent of all bathing waters), Denmark (44 or 3.5 per cent of all bathing waters), Germany (25 or 1.1 per cent of all bathing waters), the United Kingdom (25 or 4.1 per cent of all bathing waters) and Belgium (12 or 10.3 per cent of all bathing waters), Latvia (11 or four per cent of all bathing waters).
 
Four countries have more than 10 bathing waters that were banned or closed throughout the season.
 
These are Italy (553 or 9.7 per cent of all bathing waters), the Czech Republic (15 or eight per cent of all bathing waters), Germany (13 or 0.6 per cent of all bathing waters) and Spain (10 or 0.5  per cent of all bathing waters).