Political Problems of Building the Danube Dams: Debates among Comecon States, 1948–1966

Abstract

One of the bottlenecks in the economic development of the Eastern bloc countries was the lack of electricity. Their interest turned (among others) to the exploitation of hydropower, in which the Danube would have played a key role. As major sections of the Danube – an international waterway in itself – are state borders, the idea of establishing cooperation at the level of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) was raised. However, there were wide-ranging differences between the countries of the bloc, involving territorial and nationalist disputes, ideological issues and reservations about the common institutions of the bloc. These differences – Romania’s defence of her national sovereignty in particular – prevented the joint exploitation of the river. The planned power plants were thus left to national jurisdiction or (in the case of joint Danube sections) their construction was regulated by bilateral negotiations. In the case of Romanian–Yugoslav relations, this was achieved relatively quickly, but between Czechoslovakia and Hungary (although the two countries were theoretically closer) it led to almost insurmountable conflicts. The most important of these, in my opinion, although it did not surface openly, was the question of changing the Trianon borders. This dispute delayed the start of construction for decades. By the time the power plants were started building, the communist regimes had also fallen, while new conflicts – not discussed in this paper – had emerged.