On 14 June 2023, a joint Advisory Committee meeting of the “FAIRway works! in the Rhine-Danube Corridor” project took place. The project partners updated the members of the Committee on the works carried out within FAIRway Works! In the Rhine-Danube Corridor in the past months and shared relevant information regarding the preparation of a follow-up FAIRway project.

The involved partners in particular provided relevant information regarding:

  • Upgrade of the Serbian Iron Gate 2 Navigation locks
  • Serbian Equipment for Good Navigation Status (Ljubisa Mihajlovic, MGSI)
  • Austrian Equipment for Good Navigation Status (Juha Schweighofer, viadonau
  • Public mooring infrastructure in the Danube region
  • Preparatory activities in the common Croatian-Serbian Danube section
  • Waterway Monitoring System “WAMOS 2.0” – the journey towards harmonised Danube waterway data continues (Susanne Bachl, viadonau)

Upgrade of the Serbian Iron Gate 2 Navigation Locks in order to increase the reliability

After the successful finalization of the Iron Gate 1 locks, the Serbian Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure announced the recent contracting of the upgrade of the Serbian Iron Gate 2 Navigation Locks in order to increase reliability and reduce the lock cycle time. The project will be co-funded by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union and co-financed through a loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB).

The current time schedule foresees the installation of the equipment as of 18 July 2023;  the upgrade will last for a maximum of 1 year. In order to assure the continuity of the traffic, the Romanian locks in the vicinity can be used during the closure of the Serbian locks. This procedure was successfully applied during the upgrade of the Iron Gate 1 lock and worked without problems. Once the final timeframe is available, the IWT sector will be informed via a Notice to Skippers with the indicative timeframe

IWT sector applauds results and future initiatives under this flagship project

The IWT sector very much welcomes the upgrading of the Serbian Iron Gate 2 navigation locks to the detriment of increased reliability of this important waterway. In the context of reliability and certainty, which is paramount to its members to plan their services, it called upon the responsible authorities to communicate all works that will influence the navigation, in particular any closures of the locks, as early as possible and to restrict then to a minimum.

The IWT Advisory Committee member expressed her thanks to the project partners for the important work carried out and wished them lots of success in the implementation and carrying out of the works ahead and in gaining funding support for the FAIRway 2 project.

According to the representatives of CINEA, 3 project proposals have been submitted under the recent CEF call.

About “FAIRway works! in the Rhine-Danube Corridor” project
FAIRway works! in the Rhine-Danube Corridor (03/2020 – 10/2023) is a joint project of Austria and Serbia and aims to remove bottlenecks to navigation along the Serbian and Austrian sections of the Danube. It is a follow-up project of the CEF flagship initiative “FAIRway Danube” and implements the most mature initiatives in the corridor.
The project cost amounts to € 42 576 144 and is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) of the European Union.

Author: Theresia Hacksteiner