The European Union’s Water Framework Directive (WFD), and more specifically the concept of river basin management that it advocates, is considered as a model, even outside the EU, the European Commission notes with satisfaction. As proof of this, it points to the cooperation initiated by Beijing to adapt the principles for China. High-level Chinese delegations have in fact been received by the Commission, in Brussels, and also as part of the commissions for the integrated management of the Rhine (in Koblenz, Germany) and the Danube (in Vienna, Austria), cited as examples of integrated management tools for river basins “that work well”.

SALMON RETURNS

By signing, on 12 April 1999 in Bern (Switzerland), a new convention to protect the Rhine, the five states along the river (Switzerland, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) and the European Commission formally committed themselves to protecting the Rhine and its clean characteristics, its banks and its alluvial zones by strengthening cooperation that started more than 30 years ago (the first Bern convention or agreement regarding the International Commission to Protect the Rhine from Pollution dates back to 1963). The new convention came into force on 1 January 2003 and a coordination committee was set up to implement the EU’s WFD. Representatives from Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy and Belgium are also on it, in this way extending cooperation to these countries.

By cooperating on the Rhine, the aim is to achieve high-quality water by taking into account the river’s multiple uses, including producing drinking water, inland navigation, energy production and tourism. This is an objective that is on its way to being achieved because, for the first time in 2008, salmon – a reference benchmark – were once again sighted near Strasbourg. Work still remains to be done on implementing the project aimed at circumventing a hydroelectric station between Strasbourg and Basel so that the salmon can go as far as Switzerland.

BIGGEST INTERNATIONAL RIVER BASIN

Cooperation between countries along the Danube dates back to 1954, the date when the first Danube Commission was founded, followed in 1994 by the Danube River Protection Convention and its management body, the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR). Its objective is to ensure sustainable and equitable use of waters and freshwater resources in the Danube river basin.

This cooperation was strengthened in 2007, when the 16 countries along the Danube and the Black Sea ⁽¹⁾ as well as representatives of the ICPDR, the Convention on the Protection of the Black Sea and the European Commission got involved by adopting the ‘Declaration on the improvement of cooperation’, to apply the requirements of the WFD to the Danube river basin between now and 2015. The goal is for all of the Danube river basin to meet the standards required by the directive, an operation that requires significant financial resources, the implementation of a joint project and intense cooperation between all the countries involved. And that cooperation is beginning to bear fruit because, as the Commission and the WWF underlined, the ecological status of the Danube and its tributaries is beginning to improve.

⁽¹⁾ Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Moldavia, Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey and Ukraine