Ukraine not planning to lose access to the Danube

Ukraine will insist on a complex approach to the study of the Danube Delta’s ecological problems and the creation of a team of experts responsible for ecological monitoring. This announcement was made by Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Vasyl Filipchuk, who announced that agreement on the matter was reached on July 4, during recent negotiations in Odesa between the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Romania.

Commenting on the press release issued by the UN’s European Economic Commission, which studied the appropriateness of Ukraine’s actions stemming from the resumption of the deep navigable Danube-Black-Sea channel and their conformity to the Espoo Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context, Filipchuk noted that the document cannot serve as adequate proof of the commission’s ultimate findings.

“The press release issued by the UN’s European Economic Commission about this question is of a general descriptive nature and cannot attest to the commission’s substantiated findings in regard to the resumption of the deep navigable Danube-Black-Sea Channel,” declared Filipchuk. After receiving the Commission’s full scientific progress report, Ukraine’s pertinent agencies, specifically the Ministry of Environmental Protection and research institutes, will carry out a detailed study and prepare their comments.

Filipchuk stressed that the text has “at least one inaccuracy”: Ukraine is accused of failing to advise Romania of its planned activities in the Danube Delta. The Ukrainian side, however, did inform Romania about its plans to resume the deep navigable Danube-Black-Sea Channel in 2002. The head of the Ukrainian foreign ministry’s press service said that in 2004 Romania received the technical documentation on the channel, especially in regard to Bystre Estuary; that same year Kyiv hosted bilateral consultations on the issue.

At the same time Filipchuk emphasized: “We welcome the initiative formulated in the press release concerning the launch of a bilateral program aimed at studying the situation in the Danube Delta in the context of carrying out transborder projects.”