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Important progress has been made since the launch of the EU Water Initiative at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2002, with the establishment of two strategic partnerships covering Africa and twelve countries of Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia (EECCA). Two additional geographical components, covering respectively the Mediterranean and Latin America, are in the process of being designed. On the Africa front, following the signing of the ‘strategic partnership’ during WSSD in Johannesburg, there have been extensive technical exchanges between the European and African partners, through a continued dialogue during the Water Week in August 2003 in Stockholm, the African Ministerial Council on Water (AMCOW) technical meeting in Ougadougou in October 2003 and the Panafrican Water Conference in Addis Ababa in December 2003, culminating in the following four key milestones: — Adoption of a Joint Declaration on the implementation of the Union-African Strategic Partnership on Water Affairs and Sanitation; — Adoption of an outline work programme providing guidelines to drive the future stages of the development of the Union Water Initiative in Africa; — Selection of the first river basins which will benefit from initial Union support (EUR 10 million); — Pre-Selection of the first countries for the country dialogue on water supply and sanitation. Process-wise, two working groups were set up to address the provision of water and sanitation (under the leadership of Denmark and Lesotho), and the issue of integrated water resources management including for transboundary basins (under the leadership of France and Tanzania). A financial strategy has also been outlined (with United Kingdom lead). These groups involve all relevant stakeholders and are developing activities at national and regional levels for which the objectives of the Water Initiative will be applied (i.e. reinforce political ownership, increase demand based on national strategies and poverty reduction plans, reinforce coordination and efficiency of development assistance, promote partnerships involving all actors). This will take place in the first countries and river basins selected by AMCOW. A more detailed programme for the development of the African component of the EU Water Initiative including specific actions (deriving from the outputs of each programmatic objective and each Working group) will be jointly established in the coming months. Under the leadership of Denmark, significant progress has been made on the development of the Union-EECCA ‘Strategic Partnership on Water for Sustainable Development’ since its launch at the WSSD in September 2002 as part of the Union Water Initiative. The 5th United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Pan-European Conference of Environment Ministers held in Kyiv in May 2003 was an important step: participants from the 55 countries represented expressed a high level of interest in the EECCA component of the Union Water Initiative, as reflected in the Ministerial Declaration; and a Programme Document on the future development and implementation of the Union-EECCA Strategic Partnership on Water was adopted. The next stage is to take further steps towards concrete action on the ground based on the list of ‘building blocks’ identified, in order to contribute to the achievement of international targets on water and sanitation in the EECCA Region. In the Mediterranean region, under the stewardship of Greece we are very close to finalising the design of a Mediterranean component of the Water Initiative. In parallel, Spain and Portugal, in close co-operation with Mexico, are close to finalising the Latin American component of the Initiative. In recognition of the importance of financial questions, the United Kingdom is leading a working group on financial resources, while the Commission is leading an initiative on research. Additionally, monitoring tools are being developed, by international institutions and in the context of the Union Water Initiative, which should enable the progress towards the achievement of the water and sanitation targets to be reviewed.