Danubius RI project, expected to receive financial support from 11 governments

The first European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) based in Romania is expecting the letters of financial support from 11 European governments and the funding guide for the Programme for Intelligent Growth, Digitisation and Financial Instruments (POCIDIF) for the implementation of the Danubius RI project.

The Danubius Research Infrastructure (Danubius RI) project aims to create an excellent scientific infrastructure for the international scientific community that analyzes the river-sea systems affected by climate change, with the conclusions of the research to be provided to the authorities from the studied areas as basis for development strategies.

"We are talking about the creation of Danubius ERIC, an international organization based in Europe dedicated to scientific research, with Danubius ERIC to be the first ERIC based in Romania. In 2020, Romania, as host state, submitted to the European Commission the documentation for the first step and last year, in the spring, we received the opinion of the European Commission, which sent us recommendations for additional documents. There followed meetings with representatives of governments and scientific communities in European countries, and we had a very intense work period, all additional documents having been perfected," the coordinator of the Danubius RI project, the director of the National Institute of Marine Geology and Geoecology, Adrian Stanica, told AGERPRES.

As regards the scientific infrastructure in Romania, the Danube Delta National Institute for Research and Development (INCDDD) has obtained all the necessary approvals for the development of the project, but the lack of an operational program negotiated by the Romanian Government with the European Commission and a funding guide postpones the continuation of the initiative, according to the project leader for Romania, Manuela Sidoroff.

"The Danubius project for Romania has its hub in Murighiol and it has 17 research laboratories, an aquaculture area and seven spots in the Delta from where samples will be collected and transmitted to a small data center in the hub, and from here they will be transmitted to the center that processes the data at international level," added Manuela Sidoroff.

According to her, Danubius RI should become operational by 2026 and will have 10 super sites in Europe.

The Murighiol Center was inaugurated in the autumn of 2015 and cost approximately 800,000 euros, a contribution from the Romanian Government.AGERPRES