Abstract The European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive is of paramount importance for water management. According to the legal text, coordination with other directives like the Floods Directive is imperative and motivated by potential synergy effects. In this paper, the degree to which such coordination is achieved is evaluated for five Nordic and Baltic countries. The evaluation is based on legal documents, management plans, as well as on organizational structure in the five countries. The results show that the coordination between the Water Framework Directive and the Floods Directive (or flood management for Norway’s case), have been successful for Estonia and Lithuania, whereas Norway, Finland, and especially Sweden need to improve more.