When large rivers carrying lots of sediment reach the sea they often build deltas. This is most likely to happen if there are few currents or strong tides in the sea to wash away the sediment as soon as it arrives.

The Black Sea has far weaker currents and tides than the open oceans so it is easy for the Danube’s ‘load’ (the silt, sand and pebbles it carries) to be dropped at the river mouth, creating a platform of mud and sand just above sea level. The river channel tends to break off into several separate channels called ‘distributaries’ as each one looks for the best slope to take it to the sea across the almost level delta.

This mixture of dry land, swamp, sea beaches and river channels produces one of the strangest pieces of landscape in the continent of Europe. The delta of the river Danube in Romania is formed by a river which drains almost a tenth of Europe and whose basin covers ten countries.

This huge wild wetland has one of Europe’s lowest population densities – on average only three people to each square kilometre. The majority still do what they have always done – catch fish, work the land, cut the reeds. The Danube Delta is the sort of place where anything ‘modern’ seems a million miles away.

There are only one or two other spots in the whole of Europe which are anything like this. Here is a natural paradise of canals, lakes and floating islands. The Danube Delta houses 500-year-old virgin forest and the world’s largest single expanse of reed beds. The delta is a major European shelter for numerous bird species, including red-breasted geese and pelicans.

b) Steelwork locations

Romania has a steelworks – the SIDEX plant – on the Danube delta.

All steelworks anywhere require some basic conditions:

• lots of flat land – they are huge factories
• large supplies of iron ore
• lots of coal – to heat the ore in blast furnaces
• a fair supply of limestone – to help remove impurities
• a big water supply
• a large workforce
• customers wanting to buy large quantities of steel – ‘a market’ for steel

The steelworks at Galatzi is no exception. The building of this complex started 50 years ago under a communist government. It was seen as a giant status symbol for Romania. The 8 million tons of steel produced every year were to be used not only in Romania but also went for export to other communist countries in the region.

At first sight, this might seem a strange place for a major industrial town – just a few kilometres away from one of the most unusual and most remote regions in Europe. But a look at the map shows straightaway what an ideal location it was. To the south via the Danube and the Black Sea, was the Galatzi’s trading link with the world. Ocean-going ships carried and still carry raw materials like iron ore and coal in from places as far away as Australia. The ships also carry the finished goods out.

To the west, there was another important transport link. Thanks to a huge canal system completed in 1992, barges could get all the way from Romania along the Danube, across ten countries, up the rivers Main and Rhine, to Rotterdam on the west coast of Europe – 3,500km from Galatzi.

To the north was the third crucial transport route. Via the Danube and the Black Sea, ships linked Galatzi with the then Soviet Union – one of the most important customers for the steel plant and its most important supplier.

c) Privatisation

Businesses can be owned by the Government (the State) or by private companies. In the UK, the government owns the Post Office but some people would like it to be sold to a private company, that is, to ‘privatise’ it. In Romania and other countries that used to be communist, all businesses were run by the state. They weren’t really meant to make profits – they provided things everyone needed and they kept everyone employed. ‘Privatised’ companies have to make the best profit they can and can’t afford to employ people unless they are all absolutely necessary to keep profits high.

The Galatzi steelworks is still publicly owned – in other words it belongs to the Romanian government. Under the communist government which was in power until around twelve years ago, nobody was supposed to be out of work. So the steelworks took on huge numbers of people – more than necessary – and they are almost all still there – 37,000 of them.

Politics affected not only the steelworks – they have affected the look of the town itself. The steelworkers live in endless blocks of flats which were built to a standard style and pattern decided by the communist government. The quality of the workmanship was originally very poor and over the years the buildings have started to fall apart.

The trouble is that although the people are dedicated to steel, the geography and the politics that once put Galatzi and its steelworks on the map have changed drastically. The southern link to world markets via the Danube and the Black Sea is still there, but the northern link to the former Soviet Union is now meaningless since the country no longer exists, and maybe even more serious, the all-important link to Central and Western Europe via the Danube itself is, for the time being, cut.

Bombing by NATO during the recent Kosovo war has damaged many bridges in Yugoslavia, completely blocking the Danube to barge traffic. This has put 90% of Romanian tugboatmen and barge-keepers out of business, because they can no longer shift basic goods such as steel from Galatzi to the heart of Europe.

In spite of this, the Galatzi steelworks grinds on – out of date, inefficient, over-staffed, and losing money these days to the tune of £600 million a year – a leftover from the past when all industries were owned by the State and more often than not neglected.

Right next door on the Danube waterfront however, there is another plant, which has made big changes to the way it is run – the kinds of changes that are happening more and more all over Romania – and that is the Galatzi shipyard. Like the steelworks, its location on the river makes good sense – the new ships can be launched straight into the Danube and be out into the open sea within a day or so.

The yard used to be state-owned, but not any more. A year ago it was sold to a private company based in the Netherlands. This privatisation brings new managers, new ways of doing things and new money for modernisation – in the case of the Galatzi shipyard, the amount was £10 million.

d) New opportunities in the Danube Delta

Everyone knows that selling the steelworks will lead to huge job losses. The future of the town and the surrounding area may continue to be connected with steel but from now on most jobs will have to come from other business activities. In this respect some people in the area are starting to look at what special qualities the region has to offer and what it can sell.

Alexandru is one of a new generation of young Romanian businessmen. He has managed to build up a small business buying and selling fish.

Another chance for the area is to cash in on the Delta’s future potential for tourists and visitors. Throughout less well-off parts of Europe, tourism is considered to be the way to get the economy moving. So many areas see it as the way forward that there is a risk of too many places chasing too few customers; the Danube Delta, though, has its special landscape going for it. In fact it’s so different that it has its own special kind of tourism – nature tourism, and this is already attracting 100,000 visitors every year – from all over Europe and from neighbouring Galatzi. Horia, the man trying to sell the Galatzi steelworks comes here too. He is well aware that this tourism will increasingly become a much-needed boost to the local economy.