Co-legislators agree on upgrading river information services

26 June 2025, Council and Parliament have found a political agreement on an update of a 2005 directive on river information services. This agreement sets an important step towards a better deployment and use of river information services (RIS), ensuring a more efficient exchange of information between authorities, inland water transport operators and skippers.

The directive on river information services (RIS) aims at moving towards a more harmonised way of information exchange of geographical, hydrological and administrative data, data relevant to navigation, instructions in case of accidents, statistics, customs services, waterway charges and port dues for those active on or managing certain cross-border inland waterways such as canals, rivers and lakes or its ports.

The agreement strives towards reaching three objectives:

  • ensuring further harmonised standards for RIS and its data availability;
  • facilitating the integration of inland water transport into a multimodal chain of transport modes;
  • ensuring the uptake of digital tools and their interoperability, while also keeping track of data protection.

To reach these objectives, the agreement:

  • establishes a single digital platform to improve efficiency in inland water transport operations;
  • introduces requirements to share information not only with inland waterway transport users, but also with systems and applications of other modes of transport, to ensure for example harmonised ship reporting across the Union in maritime transport;
  • introduces a feedback mechanism to further improve moving towards the goals of the RIS directive;
  • updated requirements on privacy, security and the re-use of information.

Next steps
This provisional agreement will now need to be endorsed by the member states’ representatives within the Council (Coreper) and by the European Parliament. It will then be formally adopted by both institutions following legal-linguistic revision.

For more information, please see here.