The EU Water Framework Directive stipulates the principle of cost recovery, including environmental and resource costs, for European water services. Yet a definition of member states’ precise obligations is highly controversial. This particularly holds true for the question whether the request...

The application and design of public-private partnerships between the extremes of purely public or purely private task fulfilment in public services is, in practice, subject to political processes. Decisions about PPPs (realisation, arrangement) are taken in the political arena and are therefore...

So-called virtual water, the water "embedded" in internationally traded goods, has come under discussion. The amount of quantitative studies which attempt to estimate volumes and flows of virtual water in relation to agricultural trade is rising rapidly, while the concept has been recognized by...

Affordability of water services is a pressing water policy issue for both the developed and in particular the developing world. Despite its well-known theoretical shortcomings affordability analysis for water supply is up to now widely based on the ratio of a household's water expenditure and...

Unlike in developing countries, there tends to be no problem of access to water, electricity, and heating for private households in transition countries. However, transition countries have a considerable amount of low-income households, and the problem of affordability of these...