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.

The European River Symposium, held virtually on May 26 and 27, successfully concluded with many insightful presentations and discussions on actions to improve the quality of European Rivers and Wetlands.The intent of the Symposium was to help participants get acquainted with the new initiatives to support rivers and wetlands in the Biodiversity Strategy and the Green Deal and to stimulate the use of these opportunities. The conference was organized by a wide range of Partner organizations and brought together  people from Government, NGOs, River Commissions, Business and Scientists to share experience and celebrate positive efforts that have been taken to restore rivers and wetlands. In this report you can read more on key themes and lessons from the Symposium.

With over one million barriers in European rivers, there is a need to prioritise those that areremoved. The programme's focus will be to support organisations and communities working to restore rivers by funding dam removal projects that have the greatest possible impact on restoring river ecosystems. 

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.

Today in a special session at the, virtually held, European River Symposium 2021, an ECRR report was launched.

Sharelle Verheij, the implementer of the survey and the main author of the report presented the results of the survey to a professional river restoration audience of policy makers, planners, researchers, and river restoration practitioners at the European River Symposium 2021.