Arthur Valkieser, Vice-President of Water Europe, has been appointed Chairperson of CEN/TC 478, the newly established European Technical Committee on Water Resilience and Sustainable Use. In this interview, Arthur shares his priorities and explains how governance-focused standards can help accelerate Europe’s water resilience and the implementation of EU water policy.
CEN plays a crucial but often invisible role in Europe’s single market. In your view, what makes its standardisation work particularly important for the water sector today?
When you work in standardisation, you quickly realise how invisible CEN often is and at the same time how essential it is, especially for the water sector today. Water challenges do not stop at borders, and they affect every part of society: cities, industry, agriculture and citizens alike. Policy gives direction, but it is standards that make cooperation, trust and scale possible. In a fragmented European landscape, standardisation provides the common frameworks that allow solutions to be applied safely and consistently.
You have just taken up the role of Chair of CEN/TC 478. What is the first concrete priority you want this Technical Committee to drive forward to support Europe’s water resilience, and why is now the right moment to accelerate this work?
As Chair of CEN/TC 478, my first priority is to make the committee’s role very clear and very practical. We are not here to design infrastructure or define technical specifications. Our task is to develop standards around governance, stewardship and water management frameworks that help organisations act. The timing is right because the European Water Resilience Strategy has set a clear ambition. What is urgently needed now is guidance that helps translate that ambition into day-to-day decisions.
Standards are only powerful when they translate ambition into practice. How do you see the work of CEN/TC 478 supporting the implementation of the EU Water Resilience Strategy on the ground, and enabling industries, utilities and municipalities to move toward a truly Water Smart Society?
I see CEN/TC 478 as a bridge between policy and practice. By developing clear, non-technical standards, we can help utilities, industries and municipalities integrate water resilience into their strategies, investments and operations. That is how we move toward a truly Water Smart Society.
Many actors still perceive standardisation as slow or complex. What changes or innovations in the standardisation process do you believe are needed to keep pace with Europe’s water challenges?
Standardisation itself also needs to evolve. Many actors still experience it as slow or complex, and that perception is understandable. To keep pace with Europe’s water challenges, we need processes that are more agile, more focused and better aligned with policy and market timelines.
What I find particularly relevant in the recent analysis by the Clingendael Institute, which was commissioned by NEN, is the observation that the main barriers to Europe’s water transition are not a lack of ambition or technology, but fragmentation and the slow translation of policy into practice. This is exactly where standardisation can add much more value. (See: https://www.clingendael.org/publication/water-resilience-europe)
Not every challenge requires a complex technical standard. In many cases, high-level frameworks, governance models and management-oriented guidance can deliver impact much faster, help align actors across sectors and borders, and strengthen Europe’s international competitiveness by creating a level playing field for innovation and market access. If standardisation is to remain relevant, it must increasingly function as an enabler of coordinated action and global competitiveness, rather than a bottleneck.
Water cuts across multiple sectors. How will CEN/TC 478 ensure strong coordination with other Technical Committees so that standards become enablers rather than bottlenecks for cross sector innovation?
Finally, water is inherently cross-sectoral. Coordination with other Technical Committees is therefore essential. By maintaining clear scopes and strong liaison, we can ensure that standards enable innovation rather than slow it down.
