site.btaEurostat: Bulgaria Ranks 5th in Water Quality in Coastal Bathing Sites in 2023

Bulgaria ranks fifth among the EU countries with excellent water quality in coastal bathing sites (94.6%), according to a 2023 Eurostat report published on Tuesday.

In 2023, the quality of water at coastal bathing sites in the EU was very high with 88.4% of sites rated excellent, which was an increase of 3.4 pp when compared with 2013 (85.4%) and shows stability compared with 2022 (88.9%).

The EU countries with the highest quality of water at coastal bathing sites were Croatia with 99.1%, Cyprus with 97.6%, Greece with 95.8% and Slovenia with 95.2%.

The last countries in the ranking are Finland with 65.4%, Poland with 55.1% and Estonia with 46.7%.

The Sustainable Development Goal ‘Life below water' (SDG 14) aims to protect and ensure the sustainable use of oceans. This includes reducing marine pollution and ocean acidification, ending overfishing and conserving marine and coastal ecosystems. SDG 14 is strongly related to other SDGs as oceans sustain coastal economies and livelihoods, contribute to food production and function as a carbon sink.