HellasCams - Swim without Fear in the Clean Seas of Greece

:: Swim Without Fear in the Clean Seas of Greece ::

Once again, the cleanest seas and coasts in Europe this year are in Greece. In fact, the E.U. member states' quality control programme for bathing waters declared us to be "clean water champions" again. According to the results of the programme's annual report, 98.8% of our beaches match the strict requirements of both European and Greek legislation and are judged suitable for swimming.

The research on which the above results were based was carried out within the past year, as the regulations demand. In the tests, the water quality was monitored systematically, with samples from 40 prefectures in all 12 regions being analysed. In total, 23,924 samples were taken from 1,862 testing points (42 more than the previous year), divided between 1,348 beaches which either attract a considerable number of bathers or are of special interest in terms of natural beauty, tourism or the environment.

Of the 1,862 testing points, 1,839 were found to be suitable for swimming, while only 16 did not meet the required standards. This is without doubt a remarkable record when we consider that the most popular key holiday destinations, the Aegean Islands, the Ionian Islands, Chalkidiki, Crete, etc, all have crystal clear waters.

"The results of the annual survey of the quality of water for bathing around the coast of Greece in 2000 demonstrate once again the high quality of the water around 98.8% of our coastline and place Greece in the top position in the E.U." said the Minister of the Environment, Physical Planning and Public Works, Mr Kostas Laliotis, when he announced the results of the report.

He also added that the positive results are strongly linked to programmes and works carried out to clean and restore the coastline, to new forms of biological cleansing, alternative methods of waste management, protection and restoration of the coastal zone and public information campaigns about keeping the coasts clean.

The water quality control tests are carried out on the basis of E.U. guidelines and in collaboration with university hygiene laboratories and microbiology labs (both private and others which are under local authority control) as well as by other state, regional and local services. In view of all this, our country has participated in the European "Blue Flag" scheme from its start and now that the authorities responsible have begun to take action, Greece manages to achieve one of the highest numbers of various distinctions each year.

More specifically, in the programme in 1993 we received 237 distinctions, in 1994: 287, in 1995: 282, in 1996: 311, in 1997: 311, in 1998: 318 while in 1999, we were awarded 319 blue flags.

More generally, statistical evaluation of the results of the above programme for the swimming season over the last five years shows that:

the number of swimming areas monitored has increased systematically over the last five years

the number of areas which are only monitored infrequently has been reduced

an almost stable percentage of the areas tested, about 98%, comply with the restrictive limits of the directive concerning microbiological factors

the areas which appear not to comply with the limits of the directive are not generally the same each swimming season and very few fail to make the grade every year.