In 2021, the EU Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR) celebrates its 10th anniversary: 10 years of transnational cooperation in the fields of mobility and transport, energy, tourism and culture, protection of water, nature and biodiversity, education and labour market, competitiveness, strengthening of institutional cooperation and security.

To draw attention to this special anniversary, the City of Vienna published an article on the EUSDR on their website. Read more here!

The Danube Strategy Point, at the initiative of the Slovak EUSDR Presidency organised today the first meeting of the IPA and NDICI programme authorities within the region, in order to support and enhance the embedding process of the EUSDR objectives into the EU funded programmes.

The overall objective of macro-regional strategies is to pool resources and bring national approaches into a more coherent macro-level implementation in order to tackle common challenges. This should lead to visible results and in the long-term contribute to more economic, social and territorial cohesion.

On 12 May 2021, the European Commission adopted the EU Action Plan: “Towards a Zero Pollution for Air, Water and Soil”(and annexes) – a key deliverable of the European Green Deal.

Pollution harms our health and our environment. It is the largest environmental cause of multiple mental and physical diseases and of premature deaths, especially among children, people with certain medical conditions and the elderly.

On 24 April, the two-day 3rd International Conference of the Association of Geography Teachers of Slovenia “Landscape and Sustainable Development” was successfully concluded. It was performed remotely. 62 participants from four countries participated.

The international conference offered an extremely large number of pedagogical ideas and implementations, as well as implemented and documented proposals for school field work. The invited lecturers were dr. Mitja Bricelj, Ph.D. Dušan Plut, Ph.D. Gregor Kovačič, Ph.D. Ana Vovk Korže, Ph.D. Karel Natek, Ph.D. Tajan Trobec, Ph.D. Michael Scoullos, Iro Alampei and dr. Thomais Vlachogianni.

POPRI international is a competition for the best entrepreneurial idea among young people (high school students aged 14 to 18 and university students aged 18 to 29) from 9 countries of the Adriatic-Ionian macro-region (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, Greece, Italy).

The competition started in Slovenia, where 3,494 participants (supported by more than 500 mentors and 300 institutions) have taken part in it so far. POPRI International enables young people to develop innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship.

As the pandemic strikes, cargo transport volumes could be reduced across the Danube Region. In their conclusions, Danube Ministers of Transport have acknowledged the need for further cooperation across the waterway.

The  European Maritime and Fisheries Fund launches a new call to support SMEs wanting to develop and bring to market new products, services, and business models  that could ultimately create profitable activities.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Montenegro organized the 10th meeting of the Thematic Steering Group for Pillar I – Blue Growth, under the EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region (EUSAIR). The meeting was supported by the European Integration Office – EUSAIR Facility Point Project Partner in Montenegro.The event took place on 14-15 November 2019 in Tivat (Montenegro).

Croatia has taken over the Presidency of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region on 28th October 2019 in Bucharest at the EUSDR National Forum.

Read the Croatian Presidency Programme for 2020 here.

The presidency organized a national kick-off event in Vukovar on 6th November 2019, where they presented the new programme. The conference represented the start of Croatia’s one-year EUSDR presidency, which will last until 31 October 2020.

The project called  “Bilingualism in the Functional Tri-Border Region AT-HU-SK” was born because the multilingualism at this territory became more and more important along the past years. Consequently, in the framework of the project the work team analysed the legal frames as well as the legal and administrative obstacles of the cross-border kindergarten and primary school attendance.