How are European nations safeguarding their groundwater resources? This paper highlights the positive recent developments in groundwater legislation and policies across 15 European Community member States. These States recognize the importance of implementing the EC Groundwater Directive, The Integrated Pollution Prevention Control Directive and other relevant EC directives. The document emphasizes that most member States have enacted legislation and/or established policies to protect groundwater but there are significant variations in their approaches. Most have enacted legislation and/or established policies to do so. Similarly, some member States do not yet have policies that specify explicit risk assessment procedures, while others have formal risk assessment procedures in place for registering, classifying and prioritising sites. All member States recognize the importance of protecting groundwater and most have enacted legislation and/or established policies to do so. However, there are significant variations in their approaches; these variations are reflected in their approaches to site registration and classification schemes.