Delegation of Austria

CSCE Review Conference

Budapest, november 1994

Statement by Austria in Working Group 4

Agenda item III: Environmental cooperation and cooperation in the fields of science and technology

Mr.Chairman

In the 1992 Helsinki Document the participating States expressed their will to strenghthen regional cooperation activities and to consider them as an effective form of promoting CSCE principles and objectives. Furthermore, they emphasized that environmental protection should be a major consideration in international cooperation among them.

The riparian states of the Danube River Basin together with a variety of vastly different international organizations, institutions and legal personalities have put these words into practise. They have forged a future-oriented cooperation in the ecological field by initiating a process whereby the riparian countries work together to examine and develop solutions to threats to the environment, ecosystem and biodiversity of the region along the Danube River from Germany to the Black Sea.

The Environmental Prohramme for the Danube River Basin is designed to start practical action which will provide a basis for achieving long-term objectives elaborated in the Convention on Cooperation for the Protection and Sustainable Usa of the Danube River (Danube River Protection Convention). The intention is that between now and when the Convention enters into force the Unit will hand over its operations to the Secretariat of new International Commission. The DRPC was signed in Sofia on 29 June this year by Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, the Slovak republic, the Ukraine and the Commission of the European Communities. It will enter into force when nine of the States signatories have ratified or acceded to it.

The Danube Programme Coordination Unit, a six-person office which has recently moved from Brussels to Vienna was set up by the Danube States and other interested parties at the commencement of the drafting work of the Danube River Protection Convention. Its task was designed to take initial steps to deal with the environmental degradation of part years by drafting a Strategic Action Plan of environmental protection in the region and in the development of appropriate institutions. The principle funding sources encompass a vastly heterogeneous community consisting of Governments of Riparian States, the European Communities'PHARE Programme, the Global Environment Facility (UNDP, UNEP, Wordl Bank), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the United States, the Netherlands, and the great number National and international Non-Governamental Organizations.

Mr. Chairman,

My delegations holds the view that the work of the Environmental Programme for the Danube River Basin - given the diversity of legal personalities who actively support the implementation of the Danube River Protection Convention - represents a solid example for the will of nine different CSCE participating States to improve the quality of life for their populations through close transboundary and transregional cooperation.