This paper presents the current sewage sludge legislation in Europe and expected developments regarding the coming directives on the application of the "End-of-waste" criteria and on fertilizers. Discussion on sludge production and processing is also included. The Directive 86/278 has regulated the use in agriculture of residual sludge from domestic and urban wastewater. After 1986, this directive was transposed in the different member state legislation and currently the national limit values on heavy metals, some organic micropollutants and pathogens are placed in a rather wide range. This seems the inevitable consequence of different attitudes towards sludge management practices in the member states. The discussion by the European Joint Research Center (JRC) in Seville regarding application of end-of-waste criteria for compost and digestate has produced a final document (IPTS 2014) where sludge was excluded from the organic wastes admitted for producing an end-of-waste compost. Sludge processing in Europe seems addressed to different goals: sludge minimization, full stabilization and hygienization by thermal hydrolysis processes before anaerobic digestion, and on-site incineration by fluidized bed furnace. Thermophilic anaerobic digestion was applied with success on the Prague WWTP with a preliminary lysimeter centrifugation. Coming techniques, like wet oxidation and pyrolysis, are applied only on very few plants.

Rheological parameters are very important in sewage sludge management, not only as designing parameters in transporting, storing, landfilling and spreading operations, but also as controlling ones in many treatments, such as stabilisation and dewatering. To study how different treatments affect sludge rheological behaviour, research has been undertaken at CNR-Istituto di Ricerca Sulle Acque (CNR-IRSA), and the preliminary results are discussed in this paper. Sludge samples taken from three municipal wastewater treatment plants at different steps of treatment have been tested by a rotational viscometer and data interpreted through both Bingham plastic and Ostwald pseudoplastic models. Coefficients of those models have been then correlated to solids concentration. Results confirmed that solids concentration is the main parameter affecting sludge rheology and evidenced that a single parameter is not sufficient to represent the rheological behaviour, thus indicating that other parameters should be introduced and characteristics considered for a better understanding of the phenomenon.

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