Europe is the world's second-smallest continent by surface area, covering about 10,180,000 square kilometers or 2% of the Earth's surface and about 6.8% of its land area. Of Europe's approximately 50 countries/states, Russia is by far the largest by both area and population, while the Vatican City is the smallest. Of these, 22 countries/States came together in 1995 to establish the ICID's European Regional Working Group (ERWG) with the motto "Comprehensive land and water management in European River basins for the sustainable development of the rural landscape". With 23.2  million hectares of irrigated land and  9 % of the world’s population, the ERWG today provides knowledge transfer and exchange of experiences in matters of trans-boundary waters and land management in European countries; co-operation of experts and organizations engaged in nationaland international objectives and development and promotion of border crossing projects and conferences.

The WG has many Sub-committees working on topics of regional/ local significance. The WG has brought out several valuable publications like:

• ERWG Letter
• European Sector Vision on Water for Food and Rural Development (Report) - In PDF format
• ICID Guide "How to work out a drought mitigation strategy" (Guideline)
• Water Resources Management in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Slovenia (Book)
• Diffuse Entries in Rivers of the Odra Basin (Research Report)
• Proceedings of several European conferences
• Spanish Version of the DVWK Guidelines on How to Mitigate the Drought Effects

The WG has organized 25 Regional Conferences so far on topics of current importance.