The intensification of inter-country commercial relations and the development of new projects for multimodal terminals, with a focus on building new highways and railway networks, represent only a small part of the long-term effects of the Danube strategy, which is scheduled to enter into force this year, in all the countries in the region. The key point in the inter-country discussions on this topic will be related to the creation of a functional infrastructure between the countries involved in this project. “Today’s challenges have no boundaries. If we do not cooperate, we cannot come up with solutions for issues such as pollution across the Danube or climate change; we cannot take full advantage of the potential that countries such as Romania, Germany or Austria have”, said Danuta Hübner, former European Commissioner for regional development, quoted by Deutsche Welle.
Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, recently said while visiting Bucharest (Romania) that, although many changes have occurred in the last 20 years in the countries situated along the Danube, they still face numerous challenges. The Danube Strategy will be an instrument for integration and it will rely on structural funding. The strategy will create a good opportunity for investors in this region, especially for those who will develop multimodal terminals, correlating rail and inland waterways transport, two segments promoted by EU officials and marked under the category “green transport”.
Constanţa via Rotterdam
“Indeed, inland waterways transport is not as aggressive as the other types of transport, but this is because it was very little developed in Eastern Europe. Currently, even though it’s safe to say that Constanţa (Romania) has become a port-hub for the Black Sea, a port that can easily be compared to the port of Rotterdam (Netherlands), however it’s not exploited to its maximum capacity”, said Valentin Zeicu, General Manager Inland Waterways Transport Administration (Romania). He explained that, as much as the state would invest in road transport, pollution could not be avoided. Ever since last year, representatives of the port of Constanţa declared that they may cooperate with the port of Rotterdam in order to develop multimodal terminals along the Danube, thus increasing freight volumes between ports. Marker analysts say that investors, especially the railway companies which signed a partnership with the Romanian port, are not satisfied with the current situation of the rail infrastructure in the region, nor with the fact that CFR Marfă (a company owned by the Romanian Ministry of Transport) is not investing in multimodal terminals. “At this time, out of the almost 30 multimodal terminals owned by CFR Marfă, only a small part are included in an investment program for modernisation. The rest are not included in any strategy. They are not even transferred under the care of another operator who might invest in them”, said George Buruiană, Chairman of the Board of Directors at Servtrans Invest, part of International Railway Systems (Luxembourg). He explained that only 1.5-2% of the total traffic volume in Romania is represented by intermodal traffic and the idea that this segment might very well be developed in the future has barely entered the minds of ministry officials. If this segment were to develop, the most definite effect would be – according to Buruiană – a significant reduction in the transit time between the port of Constanţa and Rotterdam, without ignoring, however, a perfect correlation between railway and inland waterway transport.
On the other hand, we should probably mention that, so far, Romania has already elaborated more than tens of thousands of projects for the Danube region, projects worth tens of millions of euros. Some of the most important include the Danube-Bucharest channel, the construction of two new bridges between Romania and Bulgaria and the rehabilitation of the port infrastructure. We shall see if these projects will also receive the necessary funding.
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