The Danube Is­land 2.0 – Between Ren­at­ur­a­tion And Flood Pro­tec­tion

Due to the flood disaster in September 2024, Vienna's Danube Island and the issue of flood protection versus renaturation increasingly became the focus of discussions on social media. On the one hand, the Danube Island was praised as a prime example of renaturation and the - not uncontroversial - EU Renaturation Regulation; on the other hand, it was argued that the Danube Island, as a flood protection project, was at risk of being renaturated precisely because of the EU Renaturation Regulation. Both arguments must be rejected as legally incorrect, although from a legal point of view the implementation of a “Danube Island 2.0” would not be easy for legal reasons alone:

His­tory of the Danube Is­land