A two-day forum of the Danube River Basin countries started in Bucharest on Thursday, with speakers at the event saying that the EU's cohesion policy, which helps reduce differences between the EU's rich and poor member-countries, was a foundation of prosperity.

Addressing the event, European Regional Policy Commissioner Corina Cretu expressed hope that debates and other activities at the forum would help encourage prosperity in the Danube region.

We cannot secure better living standards for citizens across the EU without putting our identities together and demonstrating solidarity, she said.

Attending the forum were representatives of 14 countries through which the Danube passes or into which its basin extends, and where 112 million people live, which is around 20% of the EU population.

The European Commission in 2010 adopted a strategy for the Danube region as part of which it finances joint projects of nine member-countries and five countries that are still not members.

One of those projects concerns joint crisis management in cases of natural disasters such as floods.

This forum is an opportunity for countries that are not EU members to sit at the same table with EU member-countries, Cretu said, adding that this was an added value of the Danube strategy.

The attending representatives from Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia and Ukraine, discussed road construction, environmental protection, tourism, cultural cooperation and security.

The next forum of the Danube River countries, to be held in 2020, could be organised in Croatia which takes over the six-month presidency of the Council of the EU in January.