Observations of the past and projections for the future show an increase of flood risk in the world, at any spatial scale, due to changes in land use, including urbanization, increase of damage potential and due to climate change. No country can satisfactorily cope with floods. Flood losses have not been diminishing, despite attempts to reduce the flood risk and related high capital investment. These problems were tackled in the “Strengthening and Redesigning European Flood Risk Practices towards Appropriate and Resilient Flood Risk Governance Arrangements” (STAR-FLOOD) project of the European Union, funded within the 7th EU Framework Programme and implemented in 2012-2016. The object of the study were flood risk management strategies in six EU Member States: Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the UK, as well as in 18 urban regions in these countries. The aim of the project was to establish theoretical principles for designing a system to reduce the flood risk and the aim of this article was to present research results on flood risk management systems in six of the EU countries. Because the absolute flood protection is not possible, the existence of hazard and risk should be reconciled and flood risk reduction solutions should be sought via flood risk management. Bridging between essential, and usually separate, domains such as water management, spatial planning and crisis management should be sought. In the STAR-FLOOD project, five flood risk management strategies were identified: (i) prevention, (ii) defense, (iii) mitigation, (iv) preparation, and (v) restoration. In this paper, different types of strategies operating in the studied countries were identified, dominant ones were indicated and the status of diversification of strategies was examined. Defense is traditionally considered the dominating strategy in most countries, since construction of technical facilities: levees, embankments, dams, gives impression of increasing safety against floods. However, this strategy, despite increasing expenditures, turns out to be insufficient, in light of soaring flood damages. Flood risk management strategies should be appropriate to the context in which they are used and the technical means of flood defenses do not necessarily have to play the most important role. The current form of the applied flood risk management strategy depends on several factors, such as the flood-related experience, the competence of the authorities, as well as available measures. Also the degree and the ways in which integration of water management, spatial planning and crisis management is carried out, are important. The article examines cooperation mechanisms and binding acts undertaken within the realms of different strategies. Applicable standards and the purpose of discourses regarding flood risk management, as well as existing policies and development paths also play a role. The strategies are embedded in the flood risk management system, which should be appropriate, effective and efficient. Through the identification and analysis of the components of the system, i.e. participants of the process of flood risk management (the actors), functioning discourses, rules and available (or unavailable) resources, we get a picture of the flood risk management system. Of particular importance are the identification and interpretation of changes of flood risk management strategies and solutions, as well as the identification of factors that contribute to such changes, promote, inhibit, or limit them. Nevertheless, evaluation of strategies with respect to targeted funding can lead to erroneous conclusions, because the defense strategy, even carried to a lesser extent as compared to other strategies, requires significant financial expenses - technical infrastructure is expensive. Also the impact of shock events on the shape of the flood risk management system was examined. In some countries, such shocks – large floods – functioned as turning points exposing the ineffectiveness of the existing methods (Belgium, the UK). In other countries, despite unveiling weaknesses of the system, they caused a consolidation of existing schemes of action – doing the same but better (the Netherlands, Poland).
