For more rational utilization of electric energy as well as of hydropower resources, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) organized in 1956, as one of its first agencies, a commission for the exchange of electric energy and utilization of the hydraulic resources of the Danube River, which are of great importance for the Danubian member nations of theCOMECON. This commission systematized and organized into a unified plan the exchanges of electric energy which were started during the first postwar years on a small scale between different countries (the USSR and Hungary, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and others). In 1954 an agreement was concluded for construction of several transmission lines which would link Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Before the above-mentioned commission was organized, technical-economic and design investigations for utilization of the hydraulic resources of different reaches of the Danube River had been started in various countries. Of great importance was the work carried out in the Rumanian--Yugoslav zone and primarily on the reach with many rapids (the Iron Gate region), which was the most difficult reach for navigation and the most promising site from the energy viewpoint. The Commission drew up in a short period recommendations to the member nations of the COMECON, which enabled them to ensure an energy supply to the border regions in the most rational way by means of mutually beneficial electric energy exchanges, and worked out also a program for carrying out, through the joint efforts of the interested Danuhian countries, design-reconnaissance work according to a scheme for multipurpose utilization of the hydraulic resources of the Danube River between the Czechoslovakia-Austria boundary and its mouth.In 1958 the Commission for Exchange of Electric Energy and Utilization of the Hydraulic.Resources of the Danube River was reorganized as the Permanent Commission for Electric Energy of the COMECON; it has three departments which concentrate the organization of cooperation in all hydropower aspects: investigation of hydraulic resources, scientific-technical research, and design, construction, and operation of hydroelectric plants.One of the first and most important tasks carried out by the Commission was the elaboration of a report on a scheme for multipurpose utilization of the hydraulic resources of the Danube River and, in particular, for construction of large hydroelectric planrs, reclamation systems, and irrigation structures. A program for this large-scale and complex work was approved in 1957 at the Seventh Session of the COMECON; in accordance with this program, the corresponding exploration and design work was carried out in different cotmtries to develop a scheme covering hydropower, irrigation, and water uansport, and the possiblityof conswacting waterways/inking the Danube basin ~ith the Oder and Vistula basins. This work was carried out with the participation of design and scientific-research organizations in all interested ...