Danube Strategy days

The Border-crosser has been in Ulm for the launch of the consultation phase of the EU's new, all-singing, all-dancing Danube Strategy. At least you would think it was going to be all-singing, all-dancing, when you heard some of the speeches. Most of them included wishlists that were significantly longer than seems sensible and a reality check will need to be introduced at some point. A serious discussion on what can actually be done, and when, will need to happen at some point. The Serbian Deputy Prime Minister, Bozidar Djelic, made this point better than most of the Member State politicians.

Nevertheless, the Danube is an interesting case for such a macro-regional strategy. It is not the most obvious choice for such a strategy (if you had asked me a year or so ago which region would follow the Baltic, I would have guessed the Alps, or maybe the North Sea). It does not have a great history of co-operation, barring very specific examples like the Danube Commission on navigation. Certainly, it cannot offer anything to compare with the multiplicity of networks which exist in the Baltic.

However, it is not an inherently hopeless case, like the Union for the Mediterranean (more on this in a future post.) The effective lobbying at national and regional level which led the European Council to ask for a Danube Strategy last June has built up much good will and commitment. Getting 450 people to Ulm in the middle of the German winter certainly points to enthusiasm, if nothing else. Current EU co-operation programmes in the region have improved a lot compared to the past, and there is a lot of interesting, if as yet rather unco-ordinated, work going on.

Next up for the Danube is the Budapest Summit at the end of February, where prime ministers are going to turn up, wax lyrical about the river, and give an added political boost to the Strategy's preparations. Should be fun.

Project Record for South-East Europe

A number of the new co-operation programmes have evidently been worried about receiving very high numbers of project applications, causing much work for programme staff, and much disappointment for applicants, with all programmes having limited budgets. This has resulted in some programmes adopting a two stage process, with expressions of interest as a first step, and then full applications being invited from a limited number of projects only.

This is a good strategy on paper, but it does run a major risk - as expressions of interest (EoIs) are easier to write, there could be a lot more of them, as applicants think that there is nothing to lose at that stage. And so it seems to have proved.

First up was the new Mediterranean programme, which received a massive 531 EoIs in response to its first call. A month or so later, this was smashed by the South-East Europe programme, which set a new record of a frankly quite terrifying 821 EoIs. The Border Crosser is very glad not to be working in the programme secretariat.

All of this is, of course, good news. There is clearly enormous interest in co-operation across most of Europe. The South-East figures were especially good if you consider 1 in 4 of the 5,400 partners in the submissions came from outside the Union, and 1 in 3 of those came from Serbia. They really are so co-operative down there.

Of course, the real test will be on project quality and how relevant the content actually proves to be. But that is for later on. Now, anyone going to beat 821?