Offering his best wishes for Danube Day, the director of the Hrvatske Vode public water management company, Ivica Plisic, who heads the Croatian delegation at the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River, said Croatia used the Danube for water supply, navigation and irrigation.
He added that upstream there were as many as 92 hydroelectric power plants on the Danube and several downstream.
Croatia does not use the river for energy production, he said, adding that Croatia should use it more for transport purposes and irrigation of farmland.
Assistant Agriculture Minister Drazen Kurecic, who chairs the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River, said that Croatia would have at its disposal EUR 1.05 billion from EU funds for the development of water supply infrastructure in the period until 2020.
Danube Day is marked on 29 June to commemorate that date in 1994, when the Danube River Protection Convention was signed.
Eighty-three million people live in the basin of Europe's second longest river which connects 18 countries.
Its course in Croatia is 137.5 kilometres long.
Events marking Danube Day were to continue in Ilok, where participants in today's ceremony left on a boat.
Nature and Environment Protection Minister Mihael Zmajlovic said in a statement that Croatia had included a large part of its Danube river region into the Natura 2000 ecological network so as to facilitate the region's sustainable development.
He said that within the EU Strategy for the Danube Region his ministry would participate in the evaluation of projects designed to preserve biodiversity. In order to co-finance projects from the EU Strategy for the Danube Region, the European Commission has secured this year, through the START initiative, around HRK 3.4 million for 24 smaller projects. Up to 90% of those projects will be co-financed by the EC, the minister said.