International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River

The International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) is an international organisation with its permanent secretariat in Vienna. It was established by the Danube River Protection Convention, signed by the Danube countries in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1994.

The commission became active in 1998. Since then, it has grown into one of the largest and most active international bodies of river basin management expertise in Europe. The commission deals not only with the Danube itself, but also with the whole Danube River Basin, which includes more than 300 tributaries and the ground water resources.

The ICPDR’s legal basis is the “Convention on Cooperation for the Protection and Sustainable use of the Danube River (Danube River Protection Convention)”, generally referred to as the “Danube River Protection Convention” or “DRPC”. It commits the contracting parties to join their efforts in sustainable water management, including conservation of surface and ground water, pollution reduction, and the prevention and control of floods, accidents and ice hazards. The convention was signed in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1994 and came into force in October 1998.

The ICPDR was created to implement the Danube River Protection Convention (DRPC). It is both a forum to allow its contracting parties to coordinate the implementation of the convention and a platform to review the progress they make. The key objectives of the ICPDR include the following:

The ICPDR also facilitates cooperation between the Danube countries and the Black Sea region in issues requiring coordination, cooperates with other international organisations where appropriate, and addresses new challenges related to water management as they emerge.

When the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD, formally Directive 2000/60/EC) was adopted in October 2000, all countries cooperating under the DRPC (which includes at present 9 EU and 5 non EU member states) decided to make all efforts to implement the Directive throughout the whole basin. The Non EU Member States also committed themselves to implement the WFD within the frame of the DRPC. In addition, the ICPDR serves as a coordination platform for the basin-wide implementation of the EU Floods directive (EFD, formally Directive 2007/60/EC).

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