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Fourteen countries & one river: The new EU strategy for the Danube Region
The kick-off was pretty unspectacular: "The European Council invites the Commission to present by the end of 2010 an EU Strategy for the Danube Region," was the succinct statement in the final document of the Council Summit of June 2009. In July 2010 the Commission presented a first draft for this strategy which is supposed to leverage a new approach to European regional policy.
Cooperation on a new scale
The bottomline of these efforts is the attempt to bring European integration to the fore through the development of so called "macro-regions". Apart from the Danube region, this concept has already been implemented in the Baltic Sea since 2008. The bad news: No additional funding for such strategies is planned. The good news: the macro-regional approach, which is bearing fruit in the Baltic region, is still a good tool to formulate development goals on a new, large-scale level and to move forward with specific, multi-country projects. And finally, in the 2007-2013 period an already considerable € 95 billion of EU money (from the European Regional Development Fund) has been set aside for the Danube region.
Fourteen countries participated in a broad consultation process on the development of the Danube Region Strategy, including all four CENTROPE countries. Based on the inputs from the Danube states, the EU Commission developed an action plan which defined the strategic objectives and thematic priorities – and therefore a framework for specific projects. The strategic and thematic priorities are not yet finally decided, but it is already clear that the issues of environment and resource protection, transportation and the overall economic development of the region will certainly play a central role.
An opportunity for CENTROPE
The conditions for the development of a macro-region along the Danube are fundamentally different from those in the Baltic area. Whilst the Baltic Sea strategy refers to a highly economically integrated region, with clear-cut development challenges and cooperation needs, the Danube represents a much more heterogeneous region. It can therefore be much more understood as a "network of networks" (or in poetic terms: as a "string of pearls") than as a uniform trans-boundary region.
For CENTROPE this starting position offers excellent opportunities. Indeed, the European Commission recognizes CENTROPE as a means to attain a model region in the Danube region (see: Why a Danube Strategy? The Commission's view). A model region which, as is the Danube region as a whole, is multinational and multicultural and which can develop into a role model and a partner for other regions in the Danube region. In any case, the priorities of the Danube Region Strategy play to the goals of CENTROPE: issues of traffic planning and economic development are at the heart of the further development work of the Central European Region. In the coming years it will therefore be an important task of CENTROPE Capacity to find starting points for projects that can be implemented with partners along the second longest river in Europe.
More Information:
EU Strategy for the Danube Region
Video on the EU Strategy for the Danube Region
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