The Danube Question during the Paris Peace Conference and the Immediately Subsequent Period

Abstract

At the establishment of the Versailles system, Romania found itself in a double hypostasis. In the first place, the Romanian authorities defended the rights of the riparian states against the intention of the victorious Great Powers to increase their political, economic and commercial influence at the expense of their enemies. As the defeated countries were, except for Turkey, Danubian states, it is obvious that France, Great Britain and Italy wanted to secure themselves even more advantageous positions on the Danube at the expense of the territorial sovereign authorities. The disputes were related to the fluvial sector of the Danube and reached the climax during the conference for the completion of the River statute, held at Paris in the periods August 2 – November 16, 1920 and April 5 – July 21, 1921. In the second place, Romania firmly supported the internationalisation of the waterways and the preservation of the forms of international control, as the revisionist potential of the fluvial basin was not negligible; another factor of risk was the Soviet Union, the totalitarian communist state which was removed on the Dniester River. Unfortunately, Romania’s struggle for the international recognition of the Great Union determined a decrease in the intensity with which it supported its requests regarding the Danube. Romania’s pre-war problems related to the Maritime Danube were not solved by the Versailles system, the justice being on Romania’s side, as it “came, according to the Romanian jurist George Sofronie, from the hurt sovereignty of a territorial state, within which there was now a virtual fluvial state”.