The Solution to the Ukrainian-Romanian Row Stays between Negotiation and Resort

The Council of Europe Rapporteur on the issue of European deltas presented his conclusions regarding the dredging of the Bystroe Channel in the Danube Delta.

Ukraine is a signatory party to the international conventions and treaties regarding the protections of the environment; hence it is more than reasonable to ask them to comply with the obligations resulting from that, said Leo Platvoet, the European Rapporteur for European deltas.

Platvoet visited for the past few days Romania to document the impact of the dredging of the Bystroe channel on the environment.
Platvoet refrained from presenting his conclusions: "Before making any statements on this issue I need to go to Ukraine too, to hear what your neighbors have to say on the matter. One of my reasons to visit Romania was to hear what Romanian officials had to say on the way both sides dealt with the Danube Delta issue given their obligations resulting from the international conventions they signed," Platvoet said.

He said that the proofs so far are that no real communication takes place between Romania and Ukraine on the issue of the Bystroe channel. "I only hoped there would be some sort of cooperation both between the two countries alone and with help from the international community," Platvoet added.
The CE official said that he talked with officials in the Administration of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reservation, with fishermen on the Chilia branch of the Danube Delta and with investors in the fishing industry in the region.

"I noticed two Ukrainian dredging machines on the Chilia branch, close to the Maican Island, but I could not tell if they were dredging the channel or conducting maintenance work. The Romanian fishermen complained that the fish disappeared from the Chilia waters, but I could not establish if this was caused by the presence of the Ukrainian dredging machines in the vicinity," said Platvoet.

The European official said he hoped to reach by November the Ukrainian part of the delta. "I contacted the Ukrainians to set up for a visit there, but I was told that for the time being it was impossible for them to take care of that, with the presidential elections approaching. Since the elections end on Sunday [yesterday], they should be able to receive my visit from Monday onwards," said Platvoet.

He avoided calling the issue of the Bystroe channel opposing Romania and Ukraine to be "an international problem." According to sources in the Administration of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reservation Platvoet assesses it to be a bilateral conflict. "But this is in fact a conflict between Ukraine and the international organizations it signed treaties with, which Ukraine is now breaching. We hope the Europeans will realize this and act accordingly," the source said.

The Secretariat of the International Conference of the UNESCO program "The Man and the Biosphere" expressed deep concern over the fact that the Danube Delta was unilaterally partitioned in the case of the Bystroe channel. "The main concerns of UNESCO are the breach of the status of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reservation and that the Ukrainian authorities did not comply with their own commitment to cooperate with the Romanian ones," said Saturday the Governor of the Reservation, Virgil Munteanu.

Romanian authorities say the Ukrainians exaggerated when they said they made a 300,000 profit out of exploiting the Bystroe channel. "They maintained that 100 ships transited the channel, but this is not true. I sailed countless of times on the Chilia branch and I seldom saw a ship sailing on. I think this is an exaggeration of our neighbors who try to show that their project is economically viable," said Munteanu.