The French Ministry of the Environment and Water Agencies have derived environmental quality standards following the existing French framework called SEQ-Eau, for 28 pesticides and seven priority substances listed in the Water Framework Directive. Like other existing frameworks, SEQ-Eau relies upon the use of standard toxicity test results and assessment factors. This approach made it possible to derive the desired quality standards, but due to the lack of chronic toxicity data many of the standards are only provisional. In addition, emerging issues such as endocrine disruption should be taken into account in this framework. Depending on the available data, more flexible derivation approaches, such as the statistical distribution of NOECs, are recommended for future versions of SEQ-Eau. A comparison is made using SEQ-Eau and the methodology currently being discussed in Europe to develop environmental quality standards, showing that the European approach is more conservative. Conversely, the proposed approach under the Water Framework Directive does not cover the entire range of required quality classes.