page_title: Commissions of the Danube River
section_title: International stature
hierarchical_section_title: Commissions of the Danube River / International stature
context_page_description: The Commissions of the Danube River were authorized by the Treaty of Paris after the close of the Crimean War. One of these international commissions, the most successful, was the European Commission of the Danube, or, in French, Commission Européenne du Danube, the CED, which had authority over the three mouths of the river — the Chilia in the north, the Sulina in the middle, and the St. George in the south and which was originally designed to last for only two years. Instead, it lasted eighty-two years. A separate commission, the International Danube Commission, or IDC, was authorized to control commerce and improvements upriver beyond the Danube Delta and was supposed to be permanent, but it was not formally organized until after 1918.
context_section_description: The European Commission of the Danube was the first — and for a long time the only — international body to have serious police and juridical powers over private vessels and individual people, and it was seen in 1930, for example, by history professor Glen A. Blackburn of the United States as a "unique" organization.
  Without territorial possessions, it  is nevertheless a distinct international entity, possessing sovereignty over the broad waters of the Danube. . . . These entirely discretionary functions need the sanction of no group of nations, and there is no appeal from the edicts of the Commission.
  The lower section of the Danube, he continued, was "more than an internationalized river" because the CED wielded independent administrative powers. He concluded that the commission:
  falls short of being a bona fide member of the family of nations because its existence is largely de facto and not de jure. . . . It is safe to predict that the need for protecting the integrity of the commission will some day lift it out of the twilight of statehood and accord it full membership in the League of Nations.
  To the contrary, Joseph L. Kunz, a professor of international law at the University of Toledo in Ohio, wrote in 1945 that international river commissions were organized on the collegiate principle, composed of "persons appointed by the contracting states, representing them and having to act in conformity with the instructions of their states." They were, he concluded, objects, not subjects, of international law.
  Stanford University history professor Edward Krehbiel suggested in 1918 that other "international administrative agents" like the Danube Commission would eventually be created to handle specific problems. Their activities would "develop a whole body of rules which will in effect be the foundation of the super-state itself." The commission, he said:
  offers an organ through which nations can approach one another on the basis of common or united action, instead of as rivals, as is the case in an ambassadorial conference.
  In regard to the CED, he noted that the tariffs were to be settled by a majority vote of the commissioners and that "Majority rule results in making law for the minority, and . . . it therefore represents a truly profound abasement of national sovereignty."
  The establishments of the CED were guaranteed to be neutral (promulgated in 1865) and free of the restraints of the territorial authorities. It owned and operated a hospital for seamen of all countries, and it flew a flag ("composed of five parallel strips . . . arranged in the following order of colour: — red, white, blue, white, and red, the blue strip having a height double that of each of the other strips, and bearing in white the letters 'C.E.D.' ")
caption: Modern map of the Danube. Click here for a larger version of the map.
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