UK slips in clean beach rating

German, British and Portuguese beaches slipped most last year in a list of Europe's cleanest bathing sites, while the Netherlands again came out best, an EU report said on Monday.

Greek and Cypriot beaches gained highest marks after the Netherlands.

Overall, beaches in the European Union were not quite as clean in 2007 as in 2006, with around 95 percent making the grade - a drop of nearly 1 percentage point.

But fewer countries than before withdrew their seafronts from the listings to avoid scrutiny.

Topping the beach parade was the Netherlands with bathing water at all 86 tested beaches meeting mandatory hygiene standards for the third year running, followed by Greece with 99.5 percent and Cyprus with 99 percent.

This year's biggest fallers in terms of water quality included Britain, down 3 percentage points at 96.5 percent, Portugal, also down 3 percentage points at 94.6 and Germany, down 4 points at 93.7.

A British diplomat in Brussels said the slippage was largely caused by Britain's worst flooding in 60 years last summer, which caused sewers to overflow into the sea.

Romania, in its first year of testing, had 20 percent of its beaches missing the grade.

Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said Romania and fellow first-timer Bulgaria, with an 89.9 percent success rate, had still achieved much better results than many more established EU members when they started testing.

"I am glad to see a decrease in the amount of bathing sites removed from the list of tested sites and thus escaping official scrutiny," Dimas told reporters.

EU member states removed 143 beaches, lakes and rivers from the list of bathing sites they vetted, but it was 44 percent less than they deleted in 2006.

Overall, EU coastal bathing sites meeting mandatory hygiene standards fell nearly 1 percentage point in 2007 to 95.2 percent, while 88.7 percent of bathing sites in rivers and lakes complied, compared to 88.8 percent in 2006.