Has Inland Waterway Transport Any Future in East-Europe? Technological, economic, environmental challenges and potential responses

Abstract

Fresh-water transport has poorer conditions in East-Europe than in West-Europe but its significance in goods delivery was fairly high until the 1980/1990s. However it collapsed during the past two decades. It is questionable how much role technology change and how much economic restructuring played in the current recession of navigation. The impact of Europeanization (the expansion of the EU) is manifested by the increasing ratio of international goods transport. The future of inland waterway transport is entirely determined by two factors. One is how it can be integrated into the system of multimodal water transport (the combination of fresh-water/sea navigation would be the most optimal) and the other is how climate change will affect the already hardly navigable existing waterways.