With the coming revisions to the Concessions Directive no later than April 2019, the exceptions for water supply and sanitation systems are up for debate again. A new study looks at the water management of six european countries (AT, DE, HU, FR, PT, UK) and demonstrates that public providers do not fall behind private ones, they even show better results in some respects. Furthermore, current developments like the remunicipalisation of water supply and sanitation systems are identified and new phenomena of financialization (financial investors and their business models, outsourcing, privatisation) are addressed.