Four years, 18 sites, one mission: bringing Europe's freshwaters back to life

In March 2026, MERLIN scientific coordinator Daniel Hering stood before a Brussels room full of European policymakers and set out what four years of freshwater restoration had found. The evidence is clear, the tools are ready, the Nature Restoration Regulation is now law. The question is whether the will – political, institutional, financial – can match the ambition.

A few days later, we joined MERLIN project coordinator Sebastian Birk and Ellis Penning – who coordinates the SpongeScapes project and helped moderate the Brussels event – on the banks of restored streams in Belgium's Scheldt catchment. Away from the conference rooms and presentation slides, the conversation took a different shape, rooted in a landscape that is slowly and visibly recovering.

This final episode moves between those two worlds – the formal and the reflective, the policy stage and the riverbank. Between them, it captures something of what this landmark project has achieved, and what the freshwaters it set out to restore still need.