Mr. Jorge Rodríguez Romero:

Good afternoon. The term "established practice" is only used in paragraph (4) of Article 9 of the Water Framework Directive and it has certain conditions attached to it. It has a derogation from the obligations to establish a water pricing policy as in Article 9(1). Among these conditions is the requirement that the member states report the reasons for not fully applying paragraph (1) in the river basin management plans. We consider that Article 9(4) is applied at the moment when the river basin management plan is adopted. That is when any recourse to this exemption should have been done, if appropriate.