Environmental and Resource Costs under Article 9 of the Water Framework Directive.

Article 9 of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires Member States to take account of the principle of recovery of the costs of water services, including environmental and resource costs (ERC). Whilst Member States in practice claim discretion when applying Article 9, there is, however, an ongoing discussion of what is, in concrete terms, meant by and due for recovering full costs in European water policy. To make matters worse, in its judgement of 2014, the EU Court of Justice abstained from clarifying pestering problems of interpreting the legal requirements. What is more, this debate still lacks insights from decades of scientific discussion on water pricing in environmental economics. Therefore, the book provides a current in-depth analysis of all related questions of recovering the costs (ERC definition, concepts and instruments of cost recovery etc.), referring to both the legal as well as the economic aspects of pricing water services in line with Article 9 of the WFD.

Erik Gawel is Full Professor of Economics, esp. Institutional Environmental Economics, Director of the Institute for Infrastructure and Resource Management (University of Leipzig) and Head of the Department of Economics at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ (Leipzig). Furthermore, he serves as a Publicly Certified Expert for Public Cost Accounting. As such, he is consultant to several German local authorities, municipal supplier and public enterprises with respect to water and waste water pricing and management as well as forensic expert for water and waste water pricing. His scientific research fields comprise, inter alia, public finance aspects of water policy, particularly economic instruments (water tariffs and charges), cost accounting for water pricing and new institutional economics of water resources (political economy of water resources management, water law and economics). He has conducted numerous interdisciplinary studies on water policy issues in Germany, the EU as well as at the international level and is, as an economist, also considered an excellent connoisseur of water law. Outstanding expertise in the field of water pricing has made Erik Gawel one of Germany's leading and most recognised experts.