The joint visit to the ports of Galati (Romania) and Giurgiulesti (Republic of Moldova) was organized under the project on hazard and crisis management in the Danube Delta (Danube Delta Project – DDP) for the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine and with participation of Romania. The project aims at enhancing and where possible harmonizing the mechanisms and approaches for efficient and effective hazard and crisis management between the three project countries in the Danube Delta. It is funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and by the German Federal Environment Agency with means of the Advisory Assistance Programme for Environmental Protection in the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Additional support is provided by other donors.

Following the more theoretical exercise of the first technical workshop on hazard management that was held in July 2011 in Chisinau (Republic of Moldova), the hazard management component of the DDP continued with a workshop including a joint visit to the ports of Galati and Giurgiulesti. The event aimed at discussing basic safety measures to be applied at facilities hazardous to waters and at verifying, using a checklist methodology, the application of basic safety measures at oil terminals. The workshop and the joint visit were facilitated by German experts specialized in the prevention of accidental water pollution.

During the workshop and the joint visit to the ports of Galati and Giurgiulesti, the participants had the opportunity to test the checklist methodology, to practice its application during the on-site inspection and to review afterwards first-hand the inspection results. In the end, the project countries concluded that the checklist methodology was a useful and effective tool for the identification of weak points at hazardous facilities and that it provides a comprehensive and practical approach and good practice in hazard management at industrial sites.

Based on the findings of the workshop, the project countries identified the need to harmonise their national legal frameworks and to create a common basis as well as comparable conditions for the application of the checklist methodology, thereby, also rendering the checklist results comparable across the region. Against this background, the project countries agreed to prepare a study comparing their safety measures and standards, using as benchmark the standards contained in the “checklist on the verification of basic safety standards” as applied during the joint visit.