ECRR wants river rstoration practitioners to get acquainted with the new initiatives to support rivers and wetlands in the EU Biodiversity Strategy and the EU Green Deal and to stimulate the use of these new opportunities in the future. The articles in this newsletter actually teach us that the future started already some years ago. Each of the articles describes a start of a new initiative in the past and showing the results today. It appears that these results match very good with the objectives of the Biodiversity Strategy and the Green Deal policy. This means that implementing these strategy and policy is not starting from scratch, but that is a matter of scaling and speeding up these new types of integrated river basin restoration including funding and financing.

On the 26^th and 27^th of May this year the European River Symposium (ERS) 2021 has taken place as an online event and was attended by 256 rivers and wetlands professionals including policy makers, planners, practitioners, researchers, and young professionals, as well as any other interested from 38 countries in Europe and beyond. The ERS 2021 is a continuation of efforts starting in 2013, with the convening of the first European River Symposium, to strengthen efforts to protect, restore and better manage rivers in Europe. Now after four editions, this 2021 event has been a continuation of the effort to celebrate and promote positive actions in support of rivers.

The WFD is an essential piece of EU environmental legislation and is here to stay in the current form.