Preliminary assessment of the eutrophication status of selected areas in the Polish sector of the Baltic Sea according to the EU Water Framework Directive

The implementation of the European Union Water Framework Directiverequired a number of tasks to be fulfilled: classifying the variouswater bodies into different types, defining reference conditionsfor each of the types and assessing their ecological qualitystatus - this last is based on biological, hydromorphologicaland physicochemical quality elements of the ecosystem.The paper presents an attempt to estimate reference values inselected areas of Polish coastal and transitional watersas well as in an open sea area following WFD principles.The preliminary eutrophication assessment showed all the assessedareas to be eutrophication problem areas.