Emil Hurezeanu

The Danube is more than one of Europe's most important landmarks, an axis that connects the West and the East anyway. I am reminded of Orhan Pamuk's story, the great Turkish writer, who claims that the same crystal and wobbly thread of the Danube enters the Black Sea at Donaueschingen, crosses it and comes back to the surface as a clear and unsalted thread in the fountain next to the tomb of Sultan Bayezid. Of course, this is the metaphor, not the reality of the Danube. The metaphor of a flowing, diverse, multinational, multicultural and multireligious Europe, in the form of a profound identification of our European countries, from Donaueschingen in Baden, via Austria, to Sulina in Romania. The tangible and successful reality of this perception can be clearly seen in the Danube Strategy initiated by Romania and Austria. This strategy, decided in 2010, is one of the most important contributions to European geopolitical, economic and cultural relations.