Events

DANTE project final event at the Danube Commission

The final event of DTP DANTE project was taken place at the premises of the Danube Commission in Budapest on 29th May 2019. The meeting was preceded by 5th Consortium, WPL and SCOM meetings held on 28th May 2019.

DANTE aims at identifying and eliminating administrative barriers for inland waterway transport (IWT) on the Danube and its navigable tributaries as a joint initiative of the private sector and the national public authorities responsible for these barriers. Good practices and guidelines for effective administration of IWT activities shall be developed with regard to the identified barriers. The proposed solutions will be discussed with the responsible authorities at national working tables, as well as in transnational ones. This matrix approach shall deliver quick solutions and a wide harmonization of procedures and processes along the river. The monitoring system for collecting user experiences (supported by an online tool) will be a key element for successful project implementation.

The Danube Commission in its work covers the largest area of the project topics that enables the Commission to fully contribute to the project implementation, especially to the part under its responsibility – Work Package 5 – Strategy and Capitalization. Besides organization of four transnational meetings in Budapest, Galati, Karlsruhe, and Bratislava, the Danube Commission has also created the Monitoring methodology document of the implementation in order to ensure the further use of the project results. The Facilitation and monitoring platform (as a major output of the project) will be used to validate the Danube IWT Administration Strategy and Action Plan.

Moreover, the Danube Commission has recommended the use of DAVID forms in its member states through the Decision of the 91st session of 12th December 2018.

DANTE platform will continue after the closure of the project, in order to have a permanent and durable instrument to bring together the national authorities and the IWT industrial stakeholders to discuss and mitigate the barriers. Eliminating the barriers for the Danube IWT will not happen as a one-step approach, but needs continuous facilitation and monitoring.

DANTE focuses on five thematic areas where administrative barriers are most evidently reducing efficiency of IWT operations, which are:

  1. Border Police, Tax & Customs
  2. Navigation / traffic control authorities
  3. Port authorities / administrations
  4. Waterway and Canal administrations
  5. Other relevant authorities imposing barriers (e.g., health control, disaster management, etc.)