The Danish water councils are going to be re-established in 2017 after almost two years. In a newly published article, the 2014 water councils are evaluated. The water councils was an overall success, both as a process and in terms of cost-effectiveness. However, the EU Water Framework Directive encouragement of ensuring active involvement has been fulfilled only at a very basic level whereby the water councils contributed an expanded stakeholder consultation capacity. The possibility of building legitimacy and ownership in the Danish water planning was present, but was not pursued by the Danish authorities. The consequences for future stakeholder engagement in Danish water planning can be read in the article: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0030727016675691.