L 332/20 Official Journal of the European Union 10.12.2008 COMMISSION DECISION of 30 October 2008 establishing, pursuant to Directive 2000/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, the values of the Member State monitoring system classifications as a result of the intercalibration exercise (notified under document number C(2008) 6016) (Text with EEA relevance) (2008/915EC) THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES, Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Commu- nity, Having regard to Directive 2000/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2000 establishing a framework for Community action in the field of water policy (1), and in particular section 1.4.1(ix) of Annex V thereof, Whereas: o) Article 4(1)(a)(ii) of Directive 2000/60/EC requires the Member States to protect, enhance and restore all bodies of surface water with the aim of achieving good surface water status at the latest 15 years after the date of entry into force of the Directive, subject to certain exceptions, in accordance with the provisions laid down in Annex V thereto. Article 4 (1)(a)(iii) of Directive 2000/60/EC requires the Member States to protect and enhance all artificial and heavily modified bodies of water, with the aim of achieving good ecological potential and good surface water chemical status at the latest 15 years from the date of entry into force of that Directive, subject to certain exceptions, in accordance with the provisions laid down in Annex V thereto. In accordance with point (i) of section 1.4.1 of Annex V to Directive 2000/60/EC the references to ecological status should be construed as references to ecological potential as regards artificial and heavily modified water bodies. Section 1.4.1 of Annex V to Directive 2000/60/EC provides a process to ensure the comparability between Member States of biological monitoring results, being a central part of the ecological status classification. This requires the results of the Member States’ monitoring and classification systems to be compared through an intercalibration network comprised of monitoring sites in each Member State and in each ecoregion of the Community. Directive 2000/60/EC requires the Member States to collect, as appropriate, the necessary information for the sites included in the intercalibration network, in order to enable the assessment of the consistency of the national classification system with the normative definitions of section 1.2 of Annex V to Directive 2000/60/EC and the comparability of the results of classification systems between the Member States. () OJ L 327,22.12.2000, p. 1. — > ~ Commission Decision 2005/646/EC of 17 August 2005 on the establishment of a register of sites to form the intercalibration network in accordance with Directive 2000/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (3) established the register of sites to form the intercalibration network referred to in section 1.4.1(vii) of Annex V to Directive 2000/60/EC. In order to carry out the intercalibration exercise Member States are organised in Geographical Intercalibration Groups, consisting of Member States sharing particular surface water body types, as defined in Section 2 of the Annex to Decision 2005/646/EC. This has allowed each group to compare its results and to perform the intercalibration exercise among its members. The intercalibration exercise is carried out at biological element level, comparing the classification results of the national monitoring systems for each biological element and for each common surface water body type among Member States in the same Geographical Intercalibration Group, and assessing the consistency of the results with the aforementioned normative definitions. The ‘Technical report on the Water Framework Directive intercalibration exercise’ describes in detail how the intercalibration exercise has been carried out for the water categories and biological quality elements included in the Annex to this Decision. The Commission has facilitated the intercalibration exercise through the Institute of Environment and Sustainability of the Joint Research Centre in Ispra (Italy) that has coordinated the technical work. The intercalibration exercise is a complex scientific and technical task. The Geographical Intercalibration Groups have used different methodological options to carry out the exercise depending on the availability of monitoring data for the various biological quality elements and the status of development of the national monitoring and classification systems. In order to increase the statistical robustness of the OJ L 243, 19.9.2005, p. 1.