Bulgaria’s Ministry of Environment and Water said at 14:30 on Tuesday 20 October 2026 that Bulgaria and Romania are joining efforts to limit flood and drought risk along the Danube. The official notice names the strategic project “Preventing risks on the Danube” (Danube Risk), approved under the INTERREG VI-A Romania–Bulgaria 2021–2027 programme. This is an approval announcement, not a new dam and not a worksite already built.

The total budget is 17.5 million euro. The planned duration is 33 months. 80 percent of the money is a grant from the European Regional Development Fund. Those figures are the ministry’s, carried identically by BTA at 15:46. An approved budget is not proof that the monitoring network and floodplains are already in place.

One main line of work is upgrading the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (NIMH) monitoring network in northern Bulgaria and building and equipping a modern data centre. The ministry says this will improve observation of meteorological and hydrological processes and the conditions for forecasting hazardous phenomena.

The second line is nature-based. The project plans pilot work to restore floodplain river terraces so water can spread and be held naturally when river levels rise. Bulgaria’s Danube Basin Directorate is to study and select suitable territories. The sites are not yet a published list of construction yards.

The two states also plan cross-border coordination, information exchange and practical training for water management and response to extreme events. The ministry frames floods and droughts as climate risks on the river, not as a legal cause of this grant.

Bulgarian partners are the environment ministry, the Danube Basin Directorate and NIMH. Romanian partners are the Ministry of Environment, Waters and Forests (lead partner), Romanian Waters, the Technical University of Civil Engineering in Bucharest and Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași.

Headlines that call this a last-hour “strategic” drought plan, or that tie it to “this summer’s crisis”, go beyond the notice. MoEW does not announce a dam, does not link the project to Romania’s CSAT or the Black Sea, and does not say works have already started. Danube Risk is not the older Interreg V-A programme, not the DANRISS 2 navigation project, and not the ten-country Danube Floodplain project.

BTA reprints the same MoEW notice. Until a works calendar exists, the closed fact remains the project approval: 17.5 million euro, 33 months, monitoring plus floodplain pilots.

Image: Tiia Monto, the Danube at Giurgiu, 25 May 2016, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons; archive, not the INTERREG announcement of 20 October 2026.

Sources consulted: Ultima ora: Bulgaria si Romania, proiect strategic comun impotriva secetei si inundatiilor pe Dunare - Ziarul Amprenta; Bulgaria and Romania join efforts for better flood and drought protection along the Danube - MoEW.