Almost all of Malta’s bathing waters have been classified as “excellent” by the EU’s environment agency, with the country's 96.6% score ranking it second across the EU after landlocked Austria.
The figure covering 2021 is down by a whisker over the previous report when 97.7% of Maltese bathing sites were given the top classification.
In fact, the island seems to be on a consistent downward trend with Malta having scored 98.9% in the publication before that.
In its latest report, released on Tuesday, the European Environment Agency said it monitored 87 sites in Malta.
It said that 84 of these were considered excellent while another two were “good”.
One site - St George's Bay in Birzebbuga, was classified as “sufficient”.
Malta’s scoring puts it well above the EU average of 85% “excellent”.
On Monday Nature Trust International awarded Blue Flag status to 12 bays in Malta and Gozo, with one of the criteria being clean waters. St George's Bay in Birzebbuġa was not among them.
The island is one of only four EU member states where all sites were at least sufficient. The others are Bulgaria, Romania and landlocked Luxembourg.
The percentage of European bathing waters achieving at least 'sufficient' quality, the minimum quality standard set by the EU's water quality directive, increased from just 74% in 1991 to over 95% in 2003 and has remained stable since then.
One of the main requirements of the directive is to ensure that all bathing water sites were at least of 'sufficient' quality by 2015.
In the 2021 bathing season, this minimum quality standard was met by 95.2% of all EU bathing water sites.
According to the latest report, Malta continued to test all its bathing waters in line with criteria established by the EU’s Bathing Water Directive.
The directive requires countries to take a water quality sample before the bathing season starts and at least four samples throughout the season, with no more than a one-month interval between samples.
Tests monitor the presence of bacteria such as E.Coli or intestinal enterococci.
The EU-wide assessment looked at more than 21,500 bathing sites across the continent.
Between 2015 and 2021, the share of bathing waters ranked as excellent in Europe has been stable at 85 to 88% for coastal bathing sites. Inland sites such as lakes and rivers are generally poorer in quality, hitting 77 to 81%.
In 2021, 332 or 1.5% of bathing water sites in the EU were of poor quality.
The EEA said that while the share of poor-quality sites has dropped slightly since 2013, problems persist, particularly with short-term pollution.
In six EU countries, 3% or more of bathing waters were of poor quality, these were registered in Estonia, France, the Netherlands, Latvia, Slovakia, and Sweden.