ABSTRACT: The concept of water protection, according to the legislative requirements of the Water Framework Directive (WFD, 2000/60/EC), is based on the fulfilment of the environmental objectives, which include initial characterisation of all groundwater bodies. Member states may identify those groundwater bodies for which there are directly dependent surface water ecosystems. Before the identification itself, it was necessary to evaluate the hydraulic relationship between groundwater and surface water which was performed by a screening that included 1 349 surface water bodies, 16 quaternary groundwater bodies and 58 pre-Quaternary groundwater bodies. The screening process took into account individual geological formations represented by 3 parameters – underlying stratum, permeability and hydraulic conductivity. Each of the parameters was scored according to its water permeability. Subsequently, the individual points were added up. For the determination of possible interaction between surface water and groundwater the final scores were reclassified into 4 classes of interaction. Due to the complexity of heavily modify and artificial water bodies, only natural surface water bodies were taken into account. Therefore if the part of natural surface water body in first class of interaction were found in groundwater body, this part was identified as directly dependent surface water body for given groundwater body.