Cyprus ranked at the top of Europe in terms of the quality of its bathing waters in 2023, according to an assessment published this week by the European Environment Agency (EEA) in partnership with the European Commission.
A total of 97.6 percent of the bathing waters surveyed on the island of Cyprus last year got an ‘excellent’ score. A total of 123 bathing waters were surveyed, all of them coastal (beaches). In total, 1,150 samples were taken from the 123 sites.
According to the EEA, bathing waters are quality-classed according to the two microbiological parameters (Escherichia coli and intestinal enterococci) defined in the Bathing Water Directive.
Greece, with 95.8 percent (1,659) of the 1,731 beaches examined being characterized as excellent in terms of health parameters, was in 4th place in the European ranking, behind only Cyprus, Austria ( 96.9 percent) and Croatia (96.7 percent).
The vast majority of bathing water sites in Europe met the EU’s most stringent “excellent” bathing quality standards in 2023. This represents 85 percent of Europe’s popular bathing waters. As many as 96 percent of all officially identified bathing waters in the EU met the minimum quality standards, with only 1.5 percent rated as ‘poor’.
The assessment highlights where swimmers can find safe bathing sites in Europe this summer. It focuses specifically on safety for bathing, through monitoring of bacteria which can cause serious illness in people, rather than general water quality.
