Foreword

According to the Treaty establishing the European Community, The Community shall have as it task to promote a harmonious, balanced and sustainable development of economic activities, a high level of employment and social protection, equality between men and women, sustainable and non-inflationary growth, a high degree of competitiveness and convergence of economic performance, a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment, the raising of the standard of living and quality of life, and economic and social cohesion and solidarity among Member States. 

Community policy on the environment shall contribute to pursuit of the following objectives:

-          preserving, protecting and improving the quality of the environment,

-          protecting human health,

-          prudent and rational utilisation of natural resources,

-          promoting measures at international level to deal with regional or worldwide environmental problems. 

In preparing its policy on environment, shall take account of:

-          available scientific and technical data,

-          environmental conditions in various regions,

-          the potential benefits and costs of action or lack of action,

-          the economic and social development of the community as a whole and the balanced development of its regions. 

The European Parliament and the Council of the European union, having in regard the Treaty establishing the European Union, have adopted the Strategic Environmental Assessment DIRECTIVE 3001/42/EC; Environmental Impact Assessment DIRECTIVE 85/337/EEC (amended by 97/11/EC and 203/35/EC), DIRECTIVE 2000/60/EC establishing a framework for Community action in the field of water policy and other directives dealing with practical topics of “protecting human health, prudent and rational utilization of natural resources”. 

In the Danube region it means above all: protection against flood, use of water energy, improvement of navigation, improvement of water supply for agriculture, municipal water supply and others practical and local aspects. As set out in the Article 2 and Article 174 of the Treaty establishing the European Community, we are presenting review of “available scientific and technical data and environmental conditions” in the area at the Gabčíkovo hydropower project, based on the Joint Slovak-Hungarian monitoring. At the same time we are presenting proposal of the water management in the floodplain area, which will not only improve the aquatic environment, but it will take into account “prudent and rational utilization of natural resources”, and sound restoration of natural processes in floodplain, in-between flood protective dikes (for general reasoning see chapter “Potentials of the future Danube ecosystems” by Lisický and Mucha). 

I thank all of the observers, authors, contributors, and editors for the enormous effort resulting in preparation of this Conference Monograph. The views of individual specialists are based on their personal experience, deep knowledge of natural processes, investigation results, and often, a long-termed monitoring of environmental factors in the Danube area. All this experts tried to contribute to a joint aim to create and maintain such conditions in the inundation, which would be as close to natural state as possible and, at the same time, which would be conform with the basic hydrological function of the inundation and the tasks of The European Community. 

I would like to thank the Hungarian specialists and monitoring partners for the joint work done. In 2005 the Hungarian Monitoring Plenipotentiary (agent) proposed a Joint Conference on the occasion of 10 years of Joint Monitoring. The aim of the conference is to inform the community about the monitoring and its results, to discuss these results, and to improve monitoring. I am very thankful for his proposal to organise this conference.