Bulgaria and Greece are close to concluding a new deal that will allow Greece to continue using part of the Arda River outflow, Euractiv Bulgaria has learned.
The 1964 compensation agreement with Greece, under which Bulgaria was obliged to release 186 million cubic metres of water from the Arda River to irrigate agricultural land in northern Greece, expired on 9 July 2024.
Bulgaria is ready to agree to a new agreement on similar terms, but the final decision is up to the regularly elected government after snap elections on 27 October.
“The opportunity has now been given to the National Electricity Company to enter into a direct agreement with a Greek operator for the water of the Arda River, which is processed by the company’s dams. When there is a stable regular government, it will be able to conclude a new comprehensive agreement,” the Environment and Water Ministry said in its response to Euractiv Bulgaria.
With the water from the Arda River provided under the 1964 agreement, Greece directly irrigates over 817,000 hectares in northern Evros and indirectly irrigates 400,000 hectares. The Arda’s waters are of great importance for the aquatic ecosystem of this part of Greece, where agriculture is impossible without the river’s water resources.
Athens insists the new agreement should provide the same amount of water as before.
The news site E-Evros quotes Orestis Vournelis, director of the local structure of the General Organisation for the Improvement of Health in Greece, as saying that smaller quantities would disrupt the current water balance.
In the summer of 2024, Greece requested and received 80 million cubic metres of water to compensate for reduced water reserves in the Greek parts of the Arda and Mesta rivers. The water was allocated under a temporary agreement signed on 11 July between the Bulgarian National Electricity Company and the government of the Greek region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace.
Unofficially, the Bulgarian government admits that Greece receives more water from the Arda and Mesta rivers than previously agreed.
“The lack of real data on the quantities of water flowing into Greek territory is a major problem for any agreement. Greece already receives almost all of its water from southern Bulgaria,” former deputy environment and water minister Toma Belev told Euractiv.
The main problem, he said, was the exact amount of water to be set in the new draft treaty. Because of climate change, he said, it should not be specified in the new treaty because it is impossible to predict how much will be needed in ten years.
“For Greece, this agreement is important not so much because of the quantities”, but because of their regulation, Belev added.
Bulgaria is the only country in the EU that does not have river basin management plans for the period up to 2027.
After the conclusion of the Arda Treaty, Bulgaria and Greece will have to start negotiations on the use of the waters of the Mesta, as the Treaty expires in 2031.
When the Mesta Treaty was signed in 1996, Greece agreed to open three new border crossings with Bulgaria in exchange for the use of the water. The Rudozem-Xanthi crossing has not yet been opened.
On the Bulgarian side, three dams have been built on the Arda River, the only system of large dams on a single river in Bulgaria. The total volume of the dams exceeds 1.2 billion cubic metres, making it the largest dam cascade in the country.
The previous agreement between Bulgaria and Greece on the Arda River was based on war reparations under the 1947 Treaty of Paris between the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition and the allies of the Third Reich – Bulgaria, Italy, Romania, Hungary and Finland.
Under the Treaty of Paris, Bulgaria was obliged to pay $45 million in reparations to Greece, part of the debt being settled by the Arda Waters Treaty.
Turkey is also demanding additional supplies from Bulgarian dams because of a prolonged drought in the Edirne region. The Maritza and Tundzha rivers have been severely affected, with water levels falling to critical levels.
Turkey uses water from the Maritza and Tundja rivers, which flow from Bulgaria, and wants to build a dam on the Tundzha in the Edirne district, very close to the Bulgarian border.
Negotiations between the two countries have been ongoing in recent months, with Turkey offering Bulgaria gas and electricity in exchange for water. Even the renegotiation of a new contract with BOTASH for the transmission of gas is touching on the issue of water.
In August, the Bulgarian and Turkish energy ministers, Vladimir Malinov and Alparslan Bayraktar met in Istanbul to discuss the key gas agreements between the two countries. In this context, Turkey hinted at possible concessions to Bulgaria if the authorities in Sofia agreed to allocate more water to Turkey.
(Emiliya Milcheva, Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)
Source: euractiv.com
