Conclusions and Recommendations: An International Network of Water-Environment Centres for the Balkans (INWEB)

Altogether 50 Balkan specialists on water gathered in Thessaloniki on October 1.1, 1999 at a hotel high above the hilly port city on the Aegean, to discuss transboundary water problems, and to agree on solutions. They came with expectations; all of them recognised a clear need to restore resources damaged by war and by neglect. This was the first time all ten Balkan countries, including the present Yugoslavian Federation and the four former republics, Greece, Turkey, Albania, Bulgaria and Romania, had gathered for such a purpose. The agenda was full of high priority items from coping with war and environmental damage on the river Sava to protecting the coastal waters of the Aegean from untreated waste. The last agenda item, to find a way to work together for the long-term, was preceded by intense discussion. Tension was relieved, in the traditional Balkan way of scientists and technicians, by humour.