International Oil Spill brings the need for cooperation to the fore

Romania shares the Danube River with 4 of its neighbouring countries. In the last 6 years Romania entered into conflict on environmental grounds with 3 of them: Serbia, Ukraine and Hungary. Back in 2000 an Australian mining company in north-western Romania caused a major cyanide spill that poisoned several rivers in Hungary and 2000 kilometers of the Danube. Hungary unsuccessfully claimed damages from Romania. It's only now that the legislation void is being filled. Gheorghe Constantin, Head of the Water Management Department of the Romanian Ministry of the Environment:

"It was a legal dispute between the Hungarian government and the company. It was not the responsibility of the state. Right now the European countries are developing a legal instrument concerning the responsibility of the states".

The Danube was again the bone of discontent, between Romania and its neighbor to the east, namely Ukraine. In 2004 Kiev intended to inaugurate a deep navigation canal in an area of the Danube Delta that had been listed as UNESCO heritage. Romania and many international organizations did not agree with the project which threatened the Delta eco-system. But it seems that it was the massive floods in the last 2 years that messed up with Ukraine's plans, as Gheorghe Constantin says:

"We had these huge floods on the Danube, practically the sediments carried by the Chilia arm filled most of what they dug. In our opinion it's difficult to keep this canal working and they will have to dig again. And this will happen every year. They'll have to dig and to invest probably much more than they will earn."

Let's hope we won't have to cope with massive floods every year, even if that renders Ukraine's efforts to build its canal useless… Anyway, at the heart of the most recent environmental conflict was a 50 km long oil slick on the Danube caused by a Serb oil facility, a couple of weeks ago. Romania managed the situation quite well, mitigating the effects of the spill. There were no dead fish and the flora was not affected. Bucharest also jumped to help Bulgaria by donating absorbent materials and floating booms. It all cost Bucharest some 300 thousand Euros. Minister of Environment Sulfina Barbu hopes to get the money back from the Serb company:

"The Serbian Minister of Environment has taken a fair stand as he has officially acknowledged that the polluter is a Serb company. Serbia is an EU aspirant country so it will apply the EU legislation which says that the polluter pays the damages."

Yes, but Serbia is not an EU member state. Romania will join soon, but it takes two to solve a conflict, therefore we can only hope that Serbia's European aspirations will help smooth things between the two parties.

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