Pro Danube International actively engages in the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR) by lobbying for more opportunities for private sector participation and by proposing strategic projects.
In December 2010, the European Commission proposed a dedicated strategy to boost the development of the Danube Region. This strategy together with its Action Plan was adopted by the Member States at the European Council in Budapest in June 2011. The strategy identifies the main priorities and challenges for the Region where better coordination of policies and alignment of already existing financing instruments is needed. Fourteen countries (10 Danube riparian states) agreed on a common vision for the future and committed themselves to implement a first set of actions.
The Action Plan consists of 11 priority areas with the Danube waterway as Priority Area 1a (PA1a). The proposed actions regard the Danube waterway as a holistic system with necessary development actions in the area of waterway infrastructure (better maintenance as well as execution of TEN-T bottleneck projects), port development, fleet modernization, implementation of River Information Services and improvements in education and training for people working in the sector.
The implementation of PA1a is being carried out under the joint coordination of the Ministries of Transport of Austria (Mr. Reinhard Vorderwinkler) and Romania (Mr. Serban Cucu) with via donau acting as technical secretariat and Markus Simoner as its leader. The technical secretariat will collect project ideas and support the provision of projects which coincide with the objectives of the PA1a to the relevant EU programs.
It should be mentioned that there is no dedicated funding scheme behind the EUSDR at least until the end of this financial period of the EU (2007-2013). For the forthcoming financial period, the EU has indicated an alignment of funding schemes with the objectives of the strategy. Therefore, projects addressing the objectives of PA1a have to be filed to the current EU programs like SEE, CEE, TEN-T, IPA, ENPI, Marco Polo, Operational Programs, CBC – Programs, etc.
Pro Danube participated in the kick off meeting for PA1a held in Bucharest on 27 October 2011 and filed some initial strategic project proposals. These proposals address our defined priorities like infrastructure improvement, fleet modernization and port development. With regard to the port development, Pro Danube presented some details as well as a concrete project (Green Danube Ports) at the Business Forum of the Informal Meeting of the Foreign Ministers held in Bucharest on 8 November 2011.
Information on EUSDR can be retrieved here, a selection of relevant documents can be downloaded from our service section/downloads together with the PA1a project sheet. Our members are entitled to receive lobbying as well as technical support for their projects.
