Development of Danube navigation is a common task to improve export capacities of Danube ports

A trilateral meeting between Ukraine, the European Commission, and Romania was held with the support of the European Union. The talks focused on coordinating efforts to improve and develop export capacities through the Ukrainian and Romanian channels of the Danube river.

The European Commission was represented by Maja Bakran, Deputy Director-General of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE). The Ukrainian delegation was headed by Yurii Vaskov, Deputy Minister for Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development. Romania was represented by Mihnea Drumea, State Secretary of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, and Ionel Scrioșteanu, State Secretary of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure. The meeting was also attended by representatives of the Danube Commission led by Manfred Seitz, Director General of the Secretariat.

During the meeting, the parties discussed the possibility of joint depth measurement of parts of the Danube River with representatives of Romania and Ukraine in connection with the operational dredging recently carried out by the Ukrainian side.

During the meeting, Deputy Minister for Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development Yurii Vaskov said that no operational dredging was currently being carried out on the Danube River. Furthermore, an important issue of navigation improvement was discussed by both parties, including finding new ways to improve pilotage in the joint Ukrainian-Romanian sector of the river in order to increase the number of vessels calling at Danube ports.

All parties agreed that the development of efficient and safe navigation on the Danube River was possible in productive and coordinated cooperation with colleagues from the European Commission, Romania, and the Danube Commission.

Today, the Danube ports remain a stable alternative route for agricultural exports. During the year of war, the ports of Izmail, Reni, and Ust-Dunaisk increased their cargo traffic threefold. More than 17 million tonnes of cargo have been exported through the Danube port cluster, and these ports are also used to import the essential goods for Ukraine’s needs.

In May 2022, the European Commission launched the Solidarity Lanes initiative to support Ukraine and create effective logistics routes for exporting agricultural products and importing the necessary goods. One of the priority tasks is to develop waterways between the EU countries and Ukraine, which makes it possible to effectively increase the potential of the ports in the Danube region.