Recital 46

(46)In order to reduce the administrative burden and better use the possibilities offered by digitalisation, the reporting on the implementation of this Directive should be improved and simplified by removing the obligation for Member States to report every two years to the Commission and for the Commission to publish bi-yearly reports. It should be replaced by a requirement for Member States to improve, with the support of the EEA, the existing national standardised data sets established under Directive 91/271/EEC, and to regularly update them. The Commission will use those improved data sets to verify compliance with this Directive. It is appropriate for the reporting model to be developed by the EEA in collaboration with Member States. Access to the national databases should be provided to the Commission and the EEA. In order to ensure complete information on the application of this Directive, the data sets should include information on compliance of urban wastewater treatment plants with the treatment requirements (pass/fail, loads and concentration of pollutants discharged), on the level of achievement of the objectives of energy neutrality, on GHG emissions of the treatment plants above 10 000 p.e. and on measures taken by the Member States in the context of storm water overflows and urban runoff, access to sanitation and treatment by individual systems. Moreover, full consistency with Regulation (EC) No 166/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council ²⁷ should be ensured in order to optimise the use of the data, as well as to support full transparency. The information collected through those data sets should support a comparison of, and an exchange of best practices at Union level with regard to, the performance of urban wastewater treatment plants. The administrative burden of providing information and data to the public should at all times be such as to respect the principle of proportionality.