60 per cent of Europe’s surface water (lakes, rivers etc.) are not in a good chemical or ecological status, and more than a quarter of the ground water is in the same state, with agriculture remaining one of the main pressures on our water bodies. These numbers are probably underestimated, due to insufficient data and the current testing practices.
These are some of the conclusions highlighted in “Troubled Waters”, a new research project by Jelena Prtorić from Arena for Journalism in Europe and Luisa Izuzquiza from the German NGO FragDenStaat. The two have researched the status of Europe’s waterways, the severe impact of agricultural practices on water quality, and how the effort to curb and halt water pollution, at both European and national level, achieves “too little, too late”.
A new Dutch language handbook on investigative journalism methods includes a chapter on crossborder collaborative journalism by Arena editorial director Brigitte Alfter and data journalist Adriana Homolova and a contribution by Dataharvest project coordinator Ruben Brugnera.
72 students of journalism from three journalism educations in Germany, France and Sweden gathered in Brussels in late October to get to know each other, set up teams and prepare collaborative investigations across borders. They are the first of two pilot classes to develop a networked cross-border journalism education under the headline Crossborder Journalism Campus.
Companies go across borders, and labour conditions is a European and global issue. Arena is in the early stages of developing a collaborative network of journalists working on or interested in labour topics: the Arena Labour Network.
At the European Investigative Journalism Conference – Dataharvest in May 2022 we jointly launched the 
The Arena-coordinated cross-border investigation “Cities for Rent” won the European Press Prize for Innovation, when the prizes were announced on June 2nd.