The 20 principles of the European Pillar of Social Rights adopted by the EU in 2017 include the right to access such basic services as water, sanitation, energy or transport. In the face of the climate crisis, the first of these rights is becoming a service which, due to the progression of global warming, could lose its universal and easily accessible nature. It seems reasonable to ask about the chances of developing a ‘right to water’ within the framework of the EU’s system, which would unambiguously oblige the public authorities to ensure access to this right. The trigger for this research was the ‘Right2Water’ European citizens’ initiative addressed to the European Commission in 2013, which contained postulates to recognise access to water as a human right. Ten years after the launch of this procedure, it is reasonable to acknowledge the verification of the actions taken by the EU and whether the evolving EU water policy can be assessed as being oriented towards ensuring the right to water for all EU-inhabitants. The aim of this paper justifies the use of legal-dogmatic research methodology. Regarding the analysis of legal acts, the rules of legal hermeneutics were applied, esp. grammar and teleological interpretation.

In the legal sciences, the issue of water availability as a new human right has been gaining at importance in recent years. In the European Union, work is currently underway to enact the equivalent of the European Green Deal – i.e. the European Blue Deal, which will be dedicated exclusively to water issues. The purpose of this article is to analyze how the emerging comprehensive EU water strategy takes into account the legal and human dimensions of problems related to access to water and water poverty, and whether it provides for effective instruments to protect the right to water in the European Union. The work previously attempted to systematize the concepts of water security, then pointed to the most important legal acts constituting the so-called right to water and defining its elements. Subsequently, selected provisions of the EBD exposing the legal-human dimension of access to water, were presented.