The overall quality of bathing waters in the European Union has improved significantly, first with the implementation of Directive 76/176/EEC and then with Directive 2006/7/EC, which is now in force. Approximately 85% of coastal and inland bathing waters have been consistently classified as “excellent quality” in recent years.
At European Union level, 22,127 sites were monitored in 2024, of which 65.34% were coastal waters, which on average have a better quality than inland waters. 88.45% of coastal waters in the European Union have been classified as “excellent quality”, while 78.45% of inland waters have a similar quality. The largest number of monitored bathing waters is in Italy (5,538) and France (3,365). Greece, together with Cyprus, Bulgaria, Austria and Croatia, are the countries in Europe for which at least 95% of bathing waters have been classified as "excellent quality".
At the national level, according to the results of 2024, the vast majority of coastal waters and all inland bathing waters meet the minimum requirements for their classification as "excellent quality" bathing waters, set by Directive 2006/7/EC.
Based on the latest European Union assessment of the quality of bathing waters in Greece, 97% have been classified as "excellent quality", 0.9% have been classified as "good quality" and only 0.1% have been classified as "sufficient quality", and 0.1% have been classified as "insufficient quality".
Greece has been systematically monitoring the quality of bathing waters since 1990 and the results are shown schematically in the graphs below for coastal and inland bathing waters respectively.
Coastal bathing water quality
Source: EEA/ Bathing water quality 2024/Country factsheet/Greece/June 2025
Inland bathing water quality
Source: EEA/ Bathing water quality 2024/Country factsheet/Greece/June 2025
Graph 1 shows the evolution of coastal bathing water quality over time, where it is established that the majority of coastal bathing waters in Greece have had excellent quality over time.
In inland bathing waters, the evolution of their quality over time is presented in Graph 2, which shows sharp fluctuations in quality due to the small number of monitored points (6 points is the maximum number of monitoring points and one monitoring point today), with inland bathing waters being of excellent quality in recent years of assessment.