All levels of environmental law (international/EU/national) have a strong relevance to water law. The general part of environmental law is essentially related to water in all aspects, and the specific part of environmental law is related to water in a number of aspects (in particular climate protection, nature conservation, land protection). There are a number of cardinal issues that deserve to be highlighted in the context of the regulatory concept of water as an environmental element, of which the following are considered to be particularly important: quantitative and qualitative aspects of water, integrated protection and development of groundwater and surface water, and the issue of boundary-sharing between surface water and groundwater. Water resources administration is a critical aspect of environmental governance, encompassing the legal, institutional, and managerial frameworks that regulate the use, protection, and conservation of water. It can be observed that this management area is, in practice a combination of several management areas. If we look at the tasks that arise in water management, we can see that they are generally of a landscape conservation, transport, health, construction, etc. nature, with one thing in common: in this case, they are related to water. As a result, it can be said that, from the point of view of administrative law, water law is a set of laws that are administered in relation to water as a natural resource.1 The administrative tasks primarily include water management, which we tend to equate with the quantitative protection of surface water and groundwater, and is concerned with the protection of aquifers and the development of adequate water supply and regulation. In addition, the other major management task is the provision of water utilities, which regulates the provision of drinking water and the collection, drainage and treatment of rainwater and wastewater. Environmental protection pays particular attention to protecting the quality of surface water and groundwater, which is thus closely linked to water management. Finally, all three of these sectors are linked to disaster management, which is responsible for not only flood and inland water protection, but also for dealing with damage caused by industrial disasters.

This sub-chapter explores the legal frameworks governing water resource administration on international and EU levels, critically examining the role of legal instruments in addressing the challenges of water governance. It also highlights the evolving legal landscape and the implications of climate change for water management, both within the EU and in the context of international cooperation. This sub-chapter will provide a comparative analysis of the water protection administrations of five EU Member States (Germany, France, Poland, Spain and Hungary) and it contains DPSIR analyses applied to the Water Framework Directive (abbr. WFD) and water resource administration in the EU, particularly in the context of climate change.