Bulgaria has asked the European Commission not to overlook low water levels on the Danube, drought and other water problems when it makes decisions in future. The request comes from Bulgaria's chairmanship of the Danube Strategy, the press office of the regional development ministry said.
The chairmanship also wants future EU programmes and funding to help affected countries and regions cope better if a similar crisis hits again.
The Danube is one of Europe's most important natural resources — a transport and economic corridor linking over 110 million people across 14 countries, the statement says. But low water levels hit more than just ships. Transport, energy supplies, tourism, and both the amount and quality of water are affected, and with them the ecosystems and variety of species. Soil in vulnerable areas is getting worse, and it's not clear how well the areas and people along the river will be able to withstand such blows in future.
The chairmanship has also put forward a concrete next step: the key issues for the Danube Strategy should feed into a wider assessment of what low water levels and more frequent droughts are doing across the whole region. The aim is to see where the region is most vulnerable, what needs to be done long-term, how much money will be needed, and where countries can join forces. The work will be done together with the European Commission, the Danube Commission and the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River, as well as other interested parties. That way, the strategy becomes a way for cross-border problems to get a shared answer, and for the needs of individual countries to reach EU decision-making more easily.
Bulgaria chairs the EU Strategy for the Danube Region in 2026, with the regional development ministry carrying out the role. The ministry says the idea of a joint response to critically low river levels builds on the Bulgarian chairmanship's earlier work. The goal is for the region's cross-border problems to be heard more loudly at EU level. The needs of the countries, regions and people along the Danube need to be heard better in EU decisions and programmes.
On the initiative of the Bulgarian chairmanship, the EU's four macro-regional strategies joined forces for the first time to put out a shared message. These are the strategies for the Baltic Sea, the Danube region, the Adriatic-Ionian region and the Alpine region. They touch on the future of cooperation between the macro-regions and the EU's next budget. Specific guidelines were also drawn up on how the Danube Strategy's main issues can be tied more closely to future EU decisions, programmes and funding. The aim, the ministry explains, is for cooperation between countries to lead to more real solutions and investment in places where individual countries couldn't manage on their own.
Fifteen years after it was set up, the Danube Strategy now brings together nine EU member states and five countries in the process of joining the bloc. The ministry says it remains a way to find shared solutions to problems that cross national borders.
The Danube's water problem is not new. In the second half of September, the Executive Agency for Exploration and Maintenance of the Danube River in Ruse said the situation on Bulgaria's stretch of the river remains difficult because of low water levels. The drop has been going on for months now.