A River Becomes a Bridge

A River Becomes a Bridge
By Vesna Peric Zimonjic and Marian Chiriac
3/18/04 - IPS

BELGRADE/BUCHAREST, Mar 18 (IPS) - The Danube is to many 'The Blue Danube', that waltz of happy romance composed by Johann Strauss. But to people in 11 countries through which the river flows from the Black Forest in Germany down to the Black Sea, it means much more.

"The Danube can be described as the large European river that once divided, but now connects nations", says a popular Guide Through Belgrade.

A centuries-old fortress overlooks the confluence of the local Sava river and the Danube where Belgrade is located. That fortress has seen the divisions and the connections, as have so many historic buildings in the 'Danubian' countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Moldova, Slovakia, Romania, Russia, Ukraine and Serbia) down its 2,888 km course.

Serbia was at the heart of the most recent divisions. History has a way of flowing down rivers.

It was only in June last year that the Danube was finally cleaned of more than 7,000 tonnes of debris. No ordinary debris; in Novi Sad 80km from Belgrade it came from three bridges destroyed in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombing of Serbia in 1999. Unexploded ordnance had to be cleared along with the steel and concrete from the bridges.

The NATO bombing came in response to the repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo by the regime of former Serb president Slobodan Milosevic. The regime fell in October 2000 after a decade in power.

But the destruction over the Danube also opened connections. The project to open the Danube to traffic at Novi Sad became a major European Union (EU) enterprise. Several donor nations (including the Netherlands, Canada and Switzerland) contributed about 25 million dollars to make the riverbed safe for traffic again.

"The interest of major European countries in such transportation is understandable," says economics expert Nebojsa Savic. "Transport of trucks on barges is 14 times cheaper than sending them by road, and five times cheaper than putting them on trains." A barge can carry up to 100 trucks.

"The whole Danube infrastructure is essentially European infrastructure," says former Serbian economy minister Goran Pitic. The Danube is linked to the giant Rhine-Mein river transportation system in Germany that opened in 1992. This criss-crossing system connects Western Europe to the Black Sea, enabling cheap transportation of goods from Europe to Russia and the Caucasian republics.

The Danube Commission set up in 1948 has responsibility for navigation on the Danube. By the 1980s the Budapest-based commission had shown what the Danube could do.

The volume of goods the river carried rose to 91.8 million tonnes in 1987, a more than 13-fold increase from 1950. Those were golden days for the blue waters.

The sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) for its role in wars in the 1990s in Croatia and Bosnia cut the volume of transportation to only 20 million tonnes in 1994. The Serbian stretch of the Danube was closed to traffic.

But it is getting better again. More than 3,600 ships crossed under the bridges in Serbia in the first half of 2003, compared to 5,424 in the 12 months of 2002 and 3,705 in 2001, and a further strong increase is expected.

A part of the impetus is being provided by EU expansion. Of the Danubian countries, Hungary and Slovakia are to join the Union this year, with Romania and Bulgaria likely to follow in 2007.

The EU has designated the Danube, the Main-Danube canal and the Rhine as among 10 trans-European transport corridors that have priority in EU funding. The river should also benefit from EU programmes to encourage environmentally friendly models of transport.

"For sure, free circulation on the Danube is very important and has several important consequences," Daniel Cain, a Romanian historian and journalist specialising in Balkans issues told IPS. "It promotes trade and integration among Balkan states and European Union members alike. Infrastructure and investments is what's most badly needed in the region now and the EU has to play the main role in this process."

Re-opening the Danube to traffic is just the first step, says Zarko Milosev from the Novi Sad port authorities. "It is so important because so much of European and Balkan industry and infrastructure lies along the river's banks -- rail yards, steel mills, oil refineries, cement plants, ship builders and petrochemical installations."

If the Danube has built bridges, it has also been a divisive boundary. And that in turn has led to the need to build bridges across the river. Water matters also when you need to cross it.

When almost two years ago the foreign ministers of Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania threw a sealed bottle into the Danube at the point where their countries' borders meet, it promised to be the beginning of a new impetus to cross-border cooperation.

Inside the bottle was a message for future generations and a pledge by the ministers to build a region of stability, security and prosperity in a united Europe. They promised also to work together for the environmental protection of the Danube.

But since that moment in September 2002, not a lot has happened by way of real cooperation. Divisions over the building of bridges are only now being resolved.

Bulgaria applied for a 90 million dollar loan from the EU last month for a joint project with Romania to build a second bridge over the Danube, which forms the border between the two. The bridge that would link Vidin in Bulgaria close to the Serbian border with Calafat in Romania is estimated to cost 300 million dollars. Construction is due to begin this December and the bridge is due to come up in 2006.

Bulgaria and Romania are currently linked by just one, heavily congested two- lane rail and road bridge which is regarded as inadequate for increased traffic. The new bridge would have two motorway lanes and a rail track in each direction. The bridge is intended to be a part of the transport corridor defined by the EU starting from Dresden in Germany and forking in two for Thessaloniki in Greece and Istanbul in Turkey.

Work on the bridge was put off for eight years while Bulgaria and Romania argued about its location. The row was resolved with help from Brussels in 2000.

"The dispute over the bridge location is a clear example how the Balkan countries are still reluctant to work together on common projects," Cain said. "It reflects a long history of political and economic competition in the region.."

Recent conflicts are a reminder of the Danube's troubled past.

It was closed to all traffic when Turks entered Europe through the Balkans in the 14th and 15th centuries. Only after they were pushed back in 17th century could it be used for some local traffic.

The Danube saw difficult days again when it became the natural border between the Ottoman (Turkish) and the Austro-Hungarian empires. The river was opened to traffic fully only after the Turks were finally expelled from the Balkans in the second half of the 19th century. In 1856 it was proclaimed an international river.

President of the European Commission Romano Prodi says it is time for the Danube to flow past its past. "The Danube is a great European river, flowing through present and future member states," he said at an opening ceremony after the riverbed was cleared in Novi Sad. "The EU exists to heal the wounds of the past and build a better future for all Europeans. This shows what we can achieve when we work together."

The fortress in Belgrade is seeing a new history in the making. "The river separated empires several hundred years ago," professor of history Ivan Jesic told IPS. "Today it should mean the revival of economic activity, and prosperity for the people who live in the area. The good years are yet to come."

There may never be music quite like 'The Blue Danube' to celebrate them. But as the river builds bridges, it could bring joy and prosperity even to those not in love.