Bathing water on more than four out of five beaches in the European Union is of "excellent" quality, with Cyprus, Austria and Greece topping a list released on Tuesday by the European Environment Agency.
Overall, 82.8 percent of the 22,276 bathing sites surveyed across Europe in 2020 had “excellent” water quality, while 92.6 percent met the minimum standard of “fair”.
Those numbers are about two percentage points down from 2019, the EEA said, attributing this to a larger number of beaches where no data was collected over the past year due to the pandemic.
The lack of data mainly affected Poland and the UK, which is still included in the 2020 report despite Brexit.
Water quality continues to improve in Europe
Just 1.3 percent of sites report "poor" water quality, compared to 1.4 percent in 2019 and almost 2 percent in 2013.
Under EU rules, bathing waters that have been rated as 'poor' for five consecutive years will be subject to a permanent ban.
Cyprus was the only country to achieve a perfect score in the 2020 ranking. 100 percent of the bathing spots had an "excellent" water quality, ahead of Austria (97.7 percent), Greece (97.1 percent), Malta (96.6 percent) and Croatia (95.1 percent).
Germany (89.9 %), Italy (88.6 %), Spain (88.5 %), Belgium (79.7 %) and France (77.5 %) followed.
About two thirds of bathing areas in the EU are on the sea coasts, which are generally cleaner, and one third is inland.