in the case of Spain changes were made at the time of transposing the Directive. In Article 2 of the Directive, a collecting system means "a system of conduits which collects and conducts urban waste water" and therefore all sewers and drains, both public and private were included. However, in the Spanish transposition (Real Decreto-Ley 11/1995 of 28 December 1995), the definition of a collecting system was changed to mean "all systems of conduits which collect and conduct urban waste water, from the municipal sewer and drainage networks and go to the treatment plants". The added words mean that when the Spanish definition is applied to Article 3 of the Directive the municipal sewer and drainage networks are excluded. If the municipal network did not exist, as in the case of many urbanisations (housing estates) developed in the 1960s and 1970s and within agglomerations of over 2000 p.e. no collecting system needed to be provided at all, under the Real Decreto-Ley 11/1995. Obviously if waste water is not collected it cannot be treated, therefore the changed definition also affected Article 4 of the Directive. Even so, Spain had to and still has to comply fully with the Directive. On 5 March 2009, the Catalan Autonomous Government finally approved a law (La Llei de la millora d’urbanizacions) to deal with deficits of infrastructures, such as sewers in urbanisations in Catalonia, 18 years after the Directive was approved by the European Parliament. The directive also allows the establishment of less sensitive coastal areas, for which primary treatment would be sufficient, if it can be shown that there is no adverse impact on the environment (Art. 6). Member states had to establish lists of sensitive areas. It has been estimated that in 2004 about 34 percent of the pollutant load from wastewater that falls under the scope of the directive is discharged into sensitive areas. This Directive was amended by the Commission Directive 98/15/EC. Implementation challenges Commission Decision 93/481/EEC defines the information that Member States should provide the commission on the state of implementation of the Directive. The European Commission published three reports on the implementation of the directive, the latest in 2004. The report noted that the wastewater treatment situation in Europe is still very unsatisfactory and that none of the deadlines has been met by all member countries. Only Austria, Denmark and Germany fully complied with the directive. The report noted