Regimul juridic al Dunării în negocieri şi acorduri internaţionale după sfârşitul conflagraţiei mondiale până în preajma Conferinţei dunărene de la Belgrad (1945-1948)
The Judicial Statute of the Danube, Involved in International Negotiations and Agreements, after the End of the First World War and until the Time of the Danube Conference from Belgrad (1945-1948)

Summary/Abstract: At the end of the Second World War, the triumphant Great Powers – the Soviet Union, France, Great Britain and the United States – started to consider the necessity to establish a new judicial statute for the Danube. Naturally, the parties have considered as a starting point the Definitive Statute of the Danube from 1921, the document which represented the basis of the judicial statute of the river between the two World Wars. Great Britain and France claimed the validity of the Statute; in that case, Danube would have maintained the international statute that it had between the two World Wars. Also the two institutions, The European Commission of the Danube and the International Commission of the Danube, would have maintained their authority. The United States, whose isolationist politics carried on between the two World Wars prevented any active role on the Danube held by the United States, didn’t prove the same strong desire to maintain the validity of the Statute of the Danube from 1921. But, no less than the French or English diplomacy, the United States supported the international statute of the navigable rivers, which was promoting the freedom and the equal rights of all the ships sailing on international waters, irrespective of the country to which they belonged. These rights were to be defended by a Commission consisting of representatives of all the riverside countries and also of the 4 triumphant Great Powers (United States, France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union). An opposite position was adopted by the Soviet Union, which objected both against the validity of the Convention from 1921 and against any form of conceding an international statute to the waters of the Danube (invoking the rights of the riverside countries). Until around the time of the Danube Conference from Belgrade (July, 30 – August, 18, 1948) the government from Kremlin had hardly been concerned with discussing the actual or future judicial statute of the Danube; the Soviet Union was rather trying to delay all this process in order to subdue, economically and politically, the territories which were „liberated” or which were „about to be liberated” by the Red Army. Aiming at a decrease of the control of the Communist Power upon the basin of the Danube, the capitalist countries which previously had been allies of the Soviet Union either tried to put pressure on the government from Moscow through some international organizations (The Council of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the four Great Powers, the United Nations etc.), either tried to insert, in the peace treatises concluded with the defended Danubian countries, some articles concerning the statute of the river after the War, either vainly tried to persuade the Soviet Union and the countries which were in the process of becoming communist countries to participate in various commercial conventions or in other economic or financial agreements, such as the Marshall project. Finally, the parties agreed upon a compromise formula, which seemed to be a victory of the Wester block; the government from Kremlin accepted to include, in the agreements concluded with Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria, the principle of the freedom of trade and navigation on the Danube, and also agreed upon the constitution of a Conference of the Danube, with the participation, apart from the riverside countries, of the four Great Powers (the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union). But the real situation proved to be a different one, which was rather favourable to the Soviet Union; the Western block, aiming at finding a solution corresponding to its interests, was tolerant with the Soviet Union, which was offered the possibility to decide the place and the organizing details of the future Danube Conference. In the mean time, Moscow strengthened its domination upon the East and the Centre of Europe, and, at the moment discussions started at Belgrad (August, 1948), all the Danubian countries, except Austria and Western Germany, were under Communism. On the other side, satisfied with the success they achieved, the Western allies easily accepted the decision not to invite Belgium, Greece, Italy and Germany to the discussions regarding the new statute of the Danube. Austria also was supposed to participate only with an advisory role.

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