Divergent views surfaced prominently in the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) debate on December 8, 2025, over how to advance digital transformation in water management. Adam Cartwright from Siemens and Gaëtane Suzenet representing the Water4All research partnership clashed over the core challenge: Cartwright emphasized that scaling existing digital solutions—rather than inventing new ones—is the key bottleneck for utilities, which are structurally geared towards operations, not change projects. Suzenet agreed on scaling challenges but stressed that without fundamental reforms to data frameworks, trust-building mechanisms, and supportive business models, digital solutions alone won’t suffice. This debate reflects broader tensions between pragmatic industry-led scaling and a more visionary ecosystem-building approach focused on data governance and innovation support.
The debate took place within a session feeding into the EU’s 2026 Action Plan on Digitalisation in the Water Sector and aligns with the EU Water Resilience Strategy. Other participants included Andrea Cominola (Technical University Berlin), Bernardo Matos (Bentley Systems), and János Ádám Karácsony (CoR), each bringing nuanced perspectives ranging from academia to software provision and local governance.
Concrete policy proposals emerged from several speakers. Suzenet called for creating a European water-data ecosystem with harmonised reporting standards and emphasised treating digital technologies as infrastructure, backed by EU investment for deployment phases (TRL 7–9). Matos illustrated a successful case deploying digital twins in Kozani, Greece, underscoring the iterative nature of digitalisation and advocating for adoption incentives in Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) negotiations and procurement directives. Cartwright proposed standardized templates to ease adoption by small utilities, advocating cross-sectoral frameworks over sector-specific standards to reduce complexity.
Conversely, some interventions offered more declarative support without detailed targets—such as Paul Rübig (EESC), who raised critical questions about balancing open data with commercial interests, and Meike van Ginneken (Water Envoy, Netherlands), who outlined broad priorities for the upcoming EU plan but without explicit numerical goals.
The debate revealed cleavages around increasing EU-level coordination and standardisation versus respecting the diversity of utility capabilities and national approaches. There was consensus on the necessity for interoperable, trustworthy data but nuanced disagreement on how prescriptive standards and data ownership models should be. While Cartwright favored adopting best-practice frameworks from other sectors (e.g., banking) to improve interoperability without water-specific silos, Suzenet stressed separate governance approaches for different types of water data.
For stakeholders, these policy alternatives present trade-offs. Utilities, especially smaller and rural ones, could benefit from standardized adoption templates reducing complexity and costs but may face challenges if interoperability frameworks impose rigid compliance burdens. Water-sector startups and innovators might gain from new market opportunities under a European water-data ecosystem, but only if trust and workable business models materialize. National authorities are called to reconcile procurement and funding mandates to reward digital innovation at system levels. EU taxpayers and consumers stand to gain from predictive water management reducing leaks and resource wastage but must balance investments against budget priorities.
Looking forward, the European Commission is likely to integrate these debates in finalizing the 2026 Action Plan, potentially focusing on pragmatic scaling while embedding stronger EU-level coordination on data standards and investment frameworks. This approach aims to balance innovation incentives with inclusiveness for smaller utilities and practical deployment challenges, reflecting the complex landscape of digitalising a critical and diverse sector like water management.