Foreword Chemical monitoring and emerging pollutants in the Common Implementation Strategy of the Water Framework Directive Mario Carere, Stefano Polesello, Caterina Sollazzo, Bernd Manfred Gawlik This Foreword gives an overview on the last two mandates on Chemical Monitoring under the Common Implementation Strategy of the Water Framework Directive. It describes the development from 2005 until today, highlighting the various topics being addressed by the expert group. It sets the work into the relationship of the policy-making process as regards chemical-monitoring aspects for priority substances and emerging contaminants. ª 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This Special Issue of Trends in Analytical Chemistry is dedicated to the research activities on chemical moni- toring undertaken under the umbrella of the Common Implementation Strategy (CIS) for the Water Framework Directive (WFD). The agreement to start a CIS for the WFD in 2001 was seen as a milestone in working to- gether towards a successful implementation of the core water law at European Union (EU) level. Over the years, the impressive results, the added value and the cooperative spirit of the exercise have been widely recognized, and they were presented and dis- cussed in some articles published in this journal. In this past decade, the activities related to chemical monitoring in the context of the CIS were handled first by the expert group on Analyses and Monitoring of Priority Sub- stances (AMPS), then by the Chemical Monitoring Activity (CMA) group [1–3], today renamed the Chem- ical Monitoring and Emerging Pollutants (CMEP) group, thus giving recognition to the issue of new and unreg- ulated contaminants. The main aims and objectives of the CMA expert group (2005–09), which operated under the umbrella of both Working Group (WG) E (Priority Substances) and WG C Mario Carere National Institute of Health, Department Environment and Primary Prevention, Viale Regina Elena, 299, 00161 Rome, Italy Stefano Polesello IRSA-CNR, Via del Mulino 19, Brugherio, Italy Caterina Sollazzo Italian Ministry of the Environment, Rome, Italy Bernd Manfred Gawlik* European Commission, Directorate-General Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Via Enrico Fermi 2479, 21027 Ispra, Italy * Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0332 78 9487; Fax: +39 0332 78 9831; E-mail: bernd.gawlik@ec.europa.eu Foreword Trends in Analytical Chemistry, Vol. 36, 2012 12 0165-9936/$ - see front matter ª 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.trac.2012.04.008