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 TransNational Monitoring Network (TNMN) began in 1996, and the Accident Emergency Warning System (AEWS) first came into operation in 1997 – both continue today as key transnational measures under the ICPDR. Although the ICPDR contracting parties are a mix of EU Member States and Non-Member States, all have committed themselves to meeting the requirements of the EU Water Framework Directive. This commitment was augmented by the EU Floods Directive in 2007. The ICPDR celebrated 25 years of the Danube River Protection Convention in 2019. Legal basis The ICPDR’s legal basis is the Convention on Cooperation for the Protection and Sustainable use of the Danube River, 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. Objectives 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: