the organizations of the fluvial transport exhort the nations crossed from the Danube to supply to a better maintenance of the river



The European Federation of Inland Ports (EFIP), the Inland Navigation Europe (INE), the European Barge Union (EBU), the European Skippers' Organisation (ESO), For Danube International (PDI) and Maritime Ports Administration KNOWS Constantza has sped up the nations crossed from the Danube to supply to a better maintenance of the river in order to guarantee of the navigability

In recent days to Vukovar, in Croatia, in the course of a reunion of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR), the strategy of the European Union for the adopted Danube region at the end of 2010 from the EU commission, the Priority coordinated Area 1a from Austria and Rumania, that it has the objective to improve mobility and the intermodalità of the internal water ways, has introduced the study "Fairway Rehabilitation and Maintenance Master Plan for the Danube and its Navigable Tributaries" that it evidences the necessity of ulterior investments for about 85 million euros so that the long depth of -2,50 water is reached meters the majority of it dissect navigable of the suitable Danube to guarantee the navigability of the river. The great part of this figure is relative to investments in means of dredging, for the signalling of the navigable way and for the effettuazione of reliefs of the river bed of the river. Moreover anniversaries for about eight million euro are previewed other operating costs.

"Regarding the amounts of many other infrastructural projects of transport - they have emphasized EFIP, INE, EBU, ESO, PDI and MPA Constantza - this is a rather modest sum. The EU commission - they have remembered the six organizations - has moreover marked its availability to offer to a support through the co-financing EU". EFIP, INE, EBU, ESO, PDI and MPA Constantza therefore have invited "the littoral States of the Danube to approve of the master plan and to assure its fast performance".

"The current lack of maintenance of the navigation channel of the Danube, that it determines an uncertain navigation - they have emphasized - is a pressing problem for the field of the inland navigation and for the industry uses it. The nonperformance of some nations in honoring their engagement to manutenere the Danube places to risk the sure and economic navigability of the river with disastrous consequences for the field and the correlated industry. For example - they have explained - a pusher craft with four barges costs to its owner about 3.300 euros to the day of fixed costs. This money comes lost every day that the boat cannot operate because of the low levels of water. What still more important, in the medium term the unreliability of the infrastructural conditions discourages the potential customers to make to transport their goods for navigable way".

The six organizations have concluded evidencing that to carry out these investments in order to guarantee the navigability of the Danube it will have positive effects on the European economic development: "the competitive advantage on the total market of some key sectors in Europe, as the steel, the agricultural and food- one, the oil and the minerals, the inert ones - they have specified - depends in wide measure from the favorable and efficient exports and imports of raw materials through internal the navigable ways".