ICPDR

The legal frame for cooperation of the Danube Countries to assure environmental protection of ground and surface waters and ecological resources in the Danube River Basin is the Danube River Protection Convention (DRPC). Out of 13 countries in the Danube River Basin, eleven states and the European Commission have signed, and most of them have ratified the Danube River Protection Convention which came into force in October 1998.

Contracting Parties to the DRPC are Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and European Commission.

Recognizing individually and responding in common to the obligations of the DRPC, the Danube countries have established the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) to strengthen regional cooperation. It is the institutional frame not only for pollution control and the protection of water bodies but it sets also a common platform for sustainable use of ecological resources and coherent and integrated river basin management.

Objectives of the Danube River Protection Convention:

Ensure sustainable and equitable water management;
Conservation, improvement and the rational use of surface waters and ground water;
Control discharge of waste waters, inputs of nutrients and hazardous substances from point and non-point sources of emissions;
Control floods and ice hazard;
Control hazards originating from accidents (warning and preventive measures);
Reduce pollution loads of the Black Sea from sources in the Danube catchment area.