The Danube Strategy puts the region on track to protect the environment, connect the Danube countries, build prosperity and strengthen the Danube region.

The danube stretches from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, linking 14 countries and 81 million people across Europe. However, the region faces many challenges, such as lack of road and rail connections, uncoordinated efforts in education, research and innovation as well as environmental problems. The EU Strategy for the Danube Region provides an opportunity for countries to respond cooperatively to global challenges like these – as well as energy demands, security and the effects of climate change – which require a coordinated cross-border approach.

The EU Strategy for the Danube Region uses a ‘macroregional’ framework to produce more effective coordination to address issues. This approach, successfully pioneered in the Baltic region, doesn’t create new laws or institutions, but strengthens links between policies and a wide range of shareholders.

Fourteen countries working as one. The Strategy brings together nine Member States – Germany (Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria), Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania – and six non-Member States – Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Moldova and Ukraine.

According to Johannes Hahn, EU Commissioner for Regional Policy, countries should focus on the interests of the region, rather than those of their own states: “The success of the Danube Region Strategy depends on whether everybody can consider the Strategy as their own, and whether we can set such ambitious and realistic objectives that are considered equally important, by everyone,” says Hahn.

Focusing on the Strategy. The Strategy contains an action plan based on four pillars: connecting the region, protecting the environment, building prosperity and strengthening the Danube region. Based on these four pillars, the Strategy focuses on eleven priority areas. At least two countries will be responsible for each priority area; every Member State will work on at least one priority area, and non-Member States will play an active role.

For all priority areas, steering groups have been established to discuss the challenges in the priority areas, agree achievable targets and identify viable projects in the Danube region. The steering groups are managed by the priority area Coordinators and include representatives of all Danube countries active in the particular priority area field. In addition, all priority areas have adopted specific targets. These targets further focus the work of the priority area, or in some cases are new targets have been added by the steering groups.

A ten-year timeline. There isn’t a single deadline tying the Danube Strategy together. Instead, the objective of the Strategy is to lay the foundation for long-term cooperation. While individual schedules will be maintained for all of the projects contained in the action plan, results from the Strategy itself will play out on a longer scale: “Ten years is the timeframe in which people living in the Danube region should experience specific changes, if the Strategy is to be implemented appropriately,” says Hahn.

For now, the Danube Strategy is already proving that for countries to take on global challenges, they must enter a higher level of cooperation.

For more information about some of the current projects that will help achieve the Strategy’s goals, turn to the back cover fold-out.

Kirstie Shepherd is a freelance journalist living in Vienna and has
called the Danube River Basin home since 2000.