Opening session of EUSDR Forum marks official launch of Romanian Presidency of EU Strategy for Danube Region

The opening session of the National Forum of the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR) marks the official launch of the Romanian Presidency of the EUSDR, according to a press release issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE). 

"The National Forum of the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR), an event organized at the Palace of Parliament by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through the minister-delegate for European Affairs, and the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works, will take place in Bucharest, 5-6 November 2018. (...) 
The opening session of the EUSDR National Forum also marks the official launch of the Romanian Presidency of the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region, a mandate that our country is exercising between 1 November 2018 and 31 October 2019. Romania's Presidency of the EUSDR will be carried out under the title 'We Strengthen Cohesion for Common Prosperity in the Danube Region', through which we wanted synergy with the motto of the Presidency of Romania at the Council of the European Union, 'Cohesion, a Common European Value,' given the overlapping of the two terms in the first half of next year," the cited source informs. 

According to it, the EUSDR National Forum represents the framework of debates and decisions, with a strategic orientation role, whose main objective is to set the priorities and Romania's lines of action in the implementation of the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region at national, macro-regional and European levels. 

The EUSDR is one of the four macro-regional strategies of the European Union, successfully launched and promoted by Romania and Austria and endorsed by the European Council in 2011. The EUSDR is a cooperation platform of the Danube riparian states aimed at the economic and social development of the Danube macro-region and an articulation framework between the priority national development objectives and those of the "Europe 2020" Strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, assumed by the member states of the European Union. 

According to the cited source, fourteen countries are participating in the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region: nine EU member states (Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Germany - as a federal state and through the states of Baden-Wurttemberg and Bavaria, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary) and five third countries (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine). The strategy has four major objectives: interconnecting the Danube region, protecting the environment in the Danube region, increasing prosperity in the Danube region and strengthening the Danube region, being structured on 11 priority areas. 

Romania coordinates three priority areas (the maximum number allowed to the member states): inland navigation pathways (through the Ministry of Transport, together with Austria), promotion of culture, tourism and direct contacts between people (through the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration, the Ministry of Culture National Identity, the Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry for Romanians Abroad and the Department for Interethnic Relations, together with Bulgaria) and management of environmental risks (through the Ministry of Waters and Forestry, together with Hungary).