All too quiet flows the Danube
By Barry Shlachter
May 29, 1999
VIENNA, Austria - Central Europe's main water highway has become a casualty of the Kosovo conflict as NATO missiles have sent at least four Yugoslav bridges plunging into the Danube, cutting the river in two, blocking shipping and stranding hundreds of boats and their crews on either side of Novi Sad, Serbia.
War is no stranger to the Danube, once a frontier of the Roman Empire and the avenue for invading armies of Celts, Huns, Vandals and Visigoths, followed by Russians, Austrians, Germans, Turks and Bulgarians. But this time, the casualties of war include Hungarian vegetable growers and Austrian steel makers, Romanian shippers and Bulgarian barge operators. For them, the severed flow of Danubecommerce has meant millions of dollars in losses or added costs.
And especially for the 10 countries - Germany, Austria, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia- that the river flows through from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, the blockage is another incentive to see the war in Yugoslavia end and the waterway reopen.
"The river is the economic aorta of the region," said Roland Schrens, marketing director for the Port of Vienna. "This is a disaster for every business along it."
At the time the Danube was blocked, traffic was just recovering from the 1991-94 YugoslaviAll too quiet flows the Danubea embargo, said Hellmuth Strasser of the International Danube Commission based in Budapest, Hungary.
The embargo complicated shipping procedures and led to a drop from its peak of 100 million metric tons in 1987 to 19 million in 1994. Last year, shipping tonnage was estimated to have climbed back to 40 million tons. A healthy increase had been expected this year.
"We're stuck," Anastasia Pozdnyokova, a crew member of the Ukrainian passenger boat M.S. Moldavia, said in Vienna. "We can't get back to our home port on the Black Sea."
The Moldavia is luckier than many on the picturesque 1,785-mile waterway that has inspired music and poetry and has been a trade route linking western Europe and the Black Sea since amber and salt moved on the river in the days before Rome was built.
Although the Moldavia's Munich charter company was forced to cancel 25 voyages from the Black Forest of Bavaria to the Black Sea, the firm quickly rescheduled halfway trips from Passau, Germany, to Vienna. "But," said cruise guide Erika Spreckelmeyer, "most of our clients already have done the shorter trip."
It could be worse.
In Hungary, Romanian crews on marooned barges cannot go home because the state-owned shipping line, Navrom - in financial crisis even before the Kosovo conflict - cannot afford to repatriate them. Navrom estimates $25 million in losses this year due to the Danube's blocking.
Shipping companies, finding themselves with tons of raw materials in the wrong ports, are frantically urging the lifting of the 1948 Belgrade Treaty, which allows only ships from the sending or recipient nation to unload, said Schrens, whose phone system endlessly plays Johann Strauss the Younger's Blue Danube waltz when a caller is placed on hold.
The closing of the river could not have come at a worse time for the fragile economies of Bulgaria and Romania, said Vladimir Gligorov, a Columbia University-trained economist with the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies.
"It's like an earthquake - an external shock," Gligorov said. "When a quake destroys a bridge, everything must go around. And in this case, every country in the region is hurting one way or another."
Austria's Voest-Alpine Steel, which buys 150,000 tons of iron ore a month from Ukraine, has switched to rail, which can double shipping costs.
But such western European firms are better prepared to absorb added expenses than Hungarian, Romanian and Bulgarian manufacturers, who must compete aggressively with other developing countries and are already operating on razor-thin profit margins, Gligorov said.
"All of these countries have significant trade deficits that they have to finance," he said. "They cannot really afford a reduction in exports."
For Bulgaria, already in a dismal state, it could mean a 2 percent drop in gross national product, he said.
Bulgaria's state-owned shipping company has laid off half its 950 workers.
Schrens and others hope that, once the conflict is over, the debris can be cleared faster than the six months it took to remove the remnants of the Reichsbruecke (Imperial Bridge), the only Viennese bridge that wasn't destroyed in World War II, which collapsed in August 1973.
Among the Danube bridges that NATO struck was the Marshall Tito Bridge in Novi Sad, an unusually low span whose clearance occasionally delayed ships for six days at a time when the Danube ran high.
"When they rebuild, I hope they make it higher," said Sofia Petrova, a crew member of the M.S. Sofia, a Bulgarian passenger boat moored near Vienna's new Reichsbruecke that is cut off from its home port downriver in Ruse.
May 29, 1999
VIENNA, Austria - Central Europe's main water highway has become a casualty of the Kosovo conflict as NATO missiles have sent at least four Yugoslav bridges plunging into the Danube, cutting the river in two, blocking shipping and stranding hundreds of boats and their crews on either side of Novi Sad, Serbia.
War is no stranger to the Danube, once a frontier of the Roman Empire and the avenue for invading armies of Celts, Huns, Vandals and Visigoths, followed by Russians, Austrians, Germans, Turks and Bulgarians. But this time, the casualties of war include Hungarian vegetable growers and Austrian steel makers, Romanian shippers and Bulgarian barge operators. For them, the severed flow of Danubecommerce has meant millions of dollars in losses or added costs.
And especially for the 10 countries - Germany, Austria, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia- that the river flows through from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, the blockage is another incentive to see the war in Yugoslavia end and the waterway reopen.
"The river is the economic aorta of the region," said Roland Schrens, marketing director for the Port of Vienna. "This is a disaster for every business along it."
At the time the Danube was blocked, traffic was just recovering from the 1991-94 YugoslaviAll too quiet flows the Danubea embargo, said Hellmuth Strasser of the International Danube Commission based in Budapest, Hungary.
The embargo complicated shipping procedures and led to a drop from its peak of 100 million metric tons in 1987 to 19 million in 1994. Last year, shipping tonnage was estimated to have climbed back to 40 million tons. A healthy increase had been expected this year.
"We're stuck," Anastasia Pozdnyokova, a crew member of the Ukrainian passenger boat M.S. Moldavia, said in Vienna. "We can't get back to our home port on the Black Sea."
The Moldavia is luckier than many on the picturesque 1,785-mile waterway that has inspired music and poetry and has been a trade route linking western Europe and the Black Sea since amber and salt moved on the river in the days before Rome was built.
Although the Moldavia's Munich charter company was forced to cancel 25 voyages from the Black Forest of Bavaria to the Black Sea, the firm quickly rescheduled halfway trips from Passau, Germany, to Vienna. "But," said cruise guide Erika Spreckelmeyer, "most of our clients already have done the shorter trip."
It could be worse.
In Hungary, Romanian crews on marooned barges cannot go home because the state-owned shipping line, Navrom - in financial crisis even before the Kosovo conflict - cannot afford to repatriate them. Navrom estimates $25 million in losses this year due to the Danube's blocking.
Shipping companies, finding themselves with tons of raw materials in the wrong ports, are frantically urging the lifting of the 1948 Belgrade Treaty, which allows only ships from the sending or recipient nation to unload, said Schrens, whose phone system endlessly plays Johann Strauss the Younger's Blue Danube waltz when a caller is placed on hold.
The closing of the river could not have come at a worse time for the fragile economies of Bulgaria and Romania, said Vladimir Gligorov, a Columbia University-trained economist with the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies.
"It's like an earthquake - an external shock," Gligorov said. "When a quake destroys a bridge, everything must go around. And in this case, every country in the region is hurting one way or another."
Austria's Voest-Alpine Steel, which buys 150,000 tons of iron ore a month from Ukraine, has switched to rail, which can double shipping costs.
But such western European firms are better prepared to absorb added expenses than Hungarian, Romanian and Bulgarian manufacturers, who must compete aggressively with other developing countries and are already operating on razor-thin profit margins, Gligorov said.
"All of these countries have significant trade deficits that they have to finance," he said. "They cannot really afford a reduction in exports."
For Bulgaria, already in a dismal state, it could mean a 2 percent drop in gross national product, he said.
Bulgaria's state-owned shipping company has laid off half its 950 workers.
Schrens and others hope that, once the conflict is over, the debris can be cleared faster than the six months it took to remove the remnants of the Reichsbruecke (Imperial Bridge), the only Viennese bridge that wasn't destroyed in World War II, which collapsed in August 1973.
Among the Danube bridges that NATO struck was the Marshall Tito Bridge in Novi Sad, an unusually low span whose clearance occasionally delayed ships for six days at a time when the Danube ran high.
"When they rebuild, I hope they make it higher," said Sofia Petrova, a crew member of the M.S. Sofia, a Bulgarian passenger boat moored near Vienna's new Reichsbruecke that is cut off from its home port downriver in Ruse.
