To provide a porous carbon electrode for water treatment having excellent porosity, material strength, small water permeation resistance and high corrosion resistance as the porous carbon electrode to be used for an electrolytic cell for subjecting the microorganisms existing in water to an electrochemical sterilization treatment.

The porous carbon electrode having a composite structure obtd. by coating the skeletal surface of a porous carbon base material consisting of coke particles and the carbide of pitch as a binder with glassy carbon has preferably crystalline characteristics of ≤0.34 nm in the value of the average inter-lattice spacing d002 of the graphite hexagonal net face layer of its degree of graphitization and ≥20 nm in the value of the size Lc(002) of the crystallite.