The Danube Transnational Programme organised in Bucharest (Romania) on 29th September 2016 a thematic annual event under the title: BLUE DANUBE - Danube Transnational Programme: Key instrument for supporting water as a transnational resource. 

The Danube Transnational Programme itself, its stakeholders and the present and potential partner institutions need to have a thorough knowledge of the needs and challenges of the Danube region to be reflected into innovative projects with successful results.Taking that purpose in mind, the programme bodies have planned to organise a series of annual events focused on specific themes relevant for the Danube region and to be addressed in the DTP calls for proposals. A specific theme covering several thematic priorities of the programme will be selected periodically. The thematically-focused annual events aim to become a forum to stimulate discussion on the selected theme with the help of experts, programme stakeholders, interested institutions and organisations, potential applicants and project partners. This forum will allow a better preparation of future calls, fostered innovative proposals, better implementation of projects and more capitalisation opportunities.

In the 2016 edition of the DTP Annual Event, the selected theme was ‘Transnational management, use and valorisation of water related resources’. The selected 2016 theme was conceived from an integrated perspective interlinked with the four priority axes of the Danube Transnational Programme, thus the following aspects of water management were tackled:

1. Innovative solutions for Transnational Water Management
2. Transnational Water Management for a sustainable future
3. Environmentally-friendly transport systems: waterborne transport
4. Strengthening transnational multi-level governance for better Water management

Concerning the format, a general session about the Danube Transnational Programme and how it tackles the selected theme was followed by parallel workshops covering different aspects of Transnational Water Management. The event participants had the opportunity to join one of the parallel workshops organised by the JS members along with thematic experts. A Partner-search area gave participants the opportunity to check some project ideas and offer themselves as potential partners of future proposals.

The 2016 Annual Event BLUE DANUBE - Danube Transnational Programme: Key instrument for supporting water as a transnational resource provided a platform for networking opportunities, exchanging best practices and experience and building partnerships between the main programme stakeholders and other actors representing national, regional and local authorities in the Danube region. In total, around 260 people coming from different countries of the Danube Region participated in.The event took place in Bucharest, being Romania the charing country of the programme this year.

All the details about the event, including all presentations, a selection of photos and a video showing all plenary sessions and some images of the parallel workshops are available in the event specific website: http://interreg-danube.eu/dtpevent/