The Danube Commission (DC), under the presidency of H.E. Mr. Gordan Grlić Radman, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Croatia to Germany, held its 92nd session on 13th June 2019 at the premises of the Danube Commission in Budapest.
An important agenda item of the session consisted in approving the new structure of the Secretariat of the Danube Commission. The session appointed Manfred Seitz, citizen of the Republic of Austria, as Director-General of the Secretariat of the DC; Csaba Pákozdi, citizen of Hungary, as Deputy Director-General for Administrative and Financial Issues; Felix Zaharia, citizen of Romania, as Deputy Director-General for Legal Issues and Human Resources, and Piotr Semyonovich Suvorov, citizen of Ukraine, as Chief Engineer of the Secretariat of the DC, effective as of 1st July 2019.
Furthermore the session considered issues arising from the reports on the results of the meetings of the expert groups, the technical working group and the legal and financial working group, and adopted a number of decisions proposed by these groups.
Specific technical issues regarding the recognition of professional qualifications in inland navigation and the technical requirements for inland waterway vessels were discussed during the session.
The Danube Commission is an international intergovernmental organization established by the Convention regarding the regime of navigation on the Danube signed in Belgrade on 18 August 1948. Since 1954 the Commission has its seat at Budapest.
The main objectives of the Danube Commission’s activity are to provide and develop free navigation on the Danube for the commercial vessels flying the flag of all states in accordance with interests and sovereign rights of the Member States of the Belgrade Convention, as well as to strengthen and develop economic and cultural relations of the said states among themselves and with the other countries.
The Member States of the Danube Commission are: the Republic of Austria, the Republic of Bulgaria, Hungary, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Republic of Moldova, the Russian Federation, Romania, the Republic of Serbia, the Slovak Republic, Ukraine and the Republic of Croatia.
