In 2013, the European Commission published a report on the implementation of the Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR). According to the document, EU promotes the concrete transnational projects, supports the coordination of different policies and national and EU funds with a strong impact for 2014-2020.
According to the report, the EU underlines the political importance of the region by strategically supporting the ministries and the concrete progress with the implementation and also encourages the development of the cooperation platform.
During the Danube Forum reunion (18 March), the main achievements were analysed three years after the launch of the Strategy and of the Action Plan on this region, but also the future projects for its development. “For implementing the EU Strategy for the Danube Region, it is essential that the strategic projects for the development of the Danube Region included in the Action Plan of the strategy would be included in the Cooperation Agreements and in the Sectoral Operational Programme for 2014-2020 that the Commission and member states are currently negotiating. We want EC to maintain leadership in the implementation of the EU strategy for the Danube region in 2014-2020 as well and to continue to support and coordinate the activity of member states in this area. We also hope that the importance that national and regional parliaments will pay to the EU Strategy for the Danube Region would increase over the next programming period”, declared Adriana Țicău, the initiator and president of the Danube Forum in the EP.
For the implementation of the strategy, the future EC report (to be published in June) on the review of the macro-regional strategy governance is of maximum importance.
“Based on the debate on the relevance of regional macro-strategies, the report will reflect a new approach of the EU’s structural and cohesion policies, essential for the elaboration of Partnerships Agreements (PA) and Operational Programmes (OP) for the programming period 2014-2020”, declared Carmen Podgorean, Romanian National Coordinator for EUSDR.
For the railway freight transport, EC’s la-test report said that by the end of 2014, a transport market study has to be elaborated for the new freight corridor connecting EU to non-EU countries to identify a clear perspective of the role of this corridor (improved journey time and average speeds, punctuality, interoperability, simplified procedures, traffic forecast). Thus, a joint proposal on the extension of corridors or of the new corridor should be added to the list of freight corridors by several member states and the Commission. The deadline of this work is set for December 2014.
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