With a total budget of around 70 million euros, the new EU co-financed flagship project FAIRway Danube II is setting sail. The most important mission objectives for the coming years on the Danube: modern marking of the waterway, upgrading of gauging stations, upgrading of the survey fleets and the expansion of the transnational waterway monitoring system WAMOS. The official project launch took place on 29 November in Vienna’s TechGate – organised by Viadonau – alongside high-ranking representatives from the EU Commission, the Austrian Ministry for Climate Action, international organisations, industry and the WWF.
Within the EU-funded FAIRway Danube II project (www.fairwaydanube2.eu), the pilot project for flexible infrastructure aims to test an additional approach for efficient river channel management. This is to be achieved by temporarily anchoring non-propelled loaded barges in Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. For this purpose, a market survey will be carried out in order to gain an overview of the market and obtain non-binding information on the required services.
Theresia Hacksteiner and Erik Schultz, members of the Advisory Board of the project, emphasised the high importance of this project for the inland navigation sector. The Danube, being one of the major European rivers, is able to much higher volumes of traffic (both freight and passenger) for which the infrastructure needs to become future proof. With the tangible results from the first FAIRway Danube project efforts should step up in order to materialize the huge potential of this artery. Besides, the Danube and IWT play a pivotal role in supporting Ukraine, allowing imports and exports through the Solidarity Lanes. The Commission’s goal is to reach a monthly export volume of 4 million tonnes by the end of the year along the Danube corridor.
More information and the recording regarding the kick-off event and the market survey regarding the flexible infrastructure can be downloaded at:
Author: Theresia Hacksteiner
