„L’affaire du Danube” et l’européanité de la Roumanie
„The Issue of the Danube” and the Europeanity of Romania

Summary/Abstract: The Danube, an European river, par excellence, was and continues to be the most important navigation way on the continent. Along the years, the great empires – Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Habsburg and Tsarist, and, later on, the Nazi Reich and the Soviet Union – disputed the control over the Danube. Therefore, the issue of the Danube appeared in the international relations; it represented a complex of political and diplomatic problems engendered by the fact that some Principalities on the Danube – Moldavia, Wallachia and Serbia – were still suzerains of the Ottoman Empire. The War of Crimea and the Treaty from Paris (1856) turned the Danube into an European issue and passed the mouths of the Danube under an international protectorate. The creation of the European Commission of the Danube, which was supposed to administrate the Lower Danube in Moldavia and Wallachia, accelerated the process of birth of the modern Romania. Therefore, Romania of today is the political expression of an European interest regarding the Danube. After getting the national independence on the battle fields from the Southern banks of the Danube (1877) and the international legal recognition by the Congress of Berlin (1878), Romania was accepted to the European Commission of the Danube and undertook the responsibility to ensure the free navigation through the mouths of the Danube. The ways of dealing with the “issue of the Danube” passed through several phases: “Turkish river”, under the Ottoman Empire, European protectorate administrated by the European Commission of the Danube, “German river”, under the Third Reich, “Soviet River”, as imposed by the former USSR, in 1948, based on the rights of the riparian countries, but considering only the Communist riparian countries, which were under Soviet influence. The Commission of the Danube, the last regional institution of Soviet type, still functions, being formed of all the riparian countries – Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldavia, Ukraine – but also the Russian Federation, which is no longer a riparian country. The geopolitical changes of the two decades that passed after the end of the Cold war demand a new European solution to the “issue of the Danube”.

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