A high supranational authority to promote dialogue between Brussels and the Balkan countries

ABSTRACT: Two amendments tabled by the Greens and the radicals, included in the "Amaral Report", define two new projects, one for the extension on the Brindisi-Chisinau directrix of the intermode transport network of the European Community, the other for the inclusion, in the project for the enhancement of the Danube, of "negotiations for a new specific treaty" at the international level: the current initiatives for the development of that waterway are deficient at the "political and institutional" level.

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE, 26 November 1993)

An important amendment tabled by the Green member of the European Parliament and member of the Radical Party Virginio Bettini (prepared by Gianfranco Dell'Alba and Olivier Dupuis) was accepted by the European Parliament and included in the Amaral "Report" for the creation of an intermode transport system in the European Community (but in fact the report also provides for extra-Community connections). In addition to the "Koper-Ljubljana-Maribor-Budapest-Bucarest-Soha-(Saloniki)" railway connection another connection has been added, this too on railway, the "Brindisi-Durazzo-Tirana-Skopie-Sofia-Bucarest-Iasi-Chisinau". The signatures of over 500 parliamentarians from Moldavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania (and subsequently also Turkey) had been gathered in the previous months on the initiative for the creation of this "trans-Balkan" connection. Another amendment, even more interesting, and also tabled by the radicals, was included in the same Amaral report. In the point where the report hyp

othesizes "the enhancement of the Danube between Vienna and the Black Sea", it also requests the "promotion of negotiations for a new specific Treaty to replace the Belgrade Treaty, open to all States that touch the Danube and the Rhine".

Why is this amendment so important? There is a growing number of initiatives (including top-level one) to start a project for the environmental redress and for the administration of the waterway network that hinges on the Danube. Even the oceanographer Jacques Cousteau presented his plan, which is technically extremely interesting. Obviously it will be taken into account by the two Conventions that are already working on the matter: the one coordinated by Austria, which deals with the question of the "water administration" and the more specifically "environmental" one coordinated by Hungary. All these initiatives, technically very important, are nonetheless deficient in political and institutional terms. None provides for a supranational mechanism of control or management of any kind.

This is where the radical initiative wants to intervene, aiming at two alternative models: a "High Authority of the Danube" or a "European river and waterways Community". The radical amendment pursues this second objective, in that it requires a revision, by inadequacy, of the international treaty that is still in force.