For their seventh in-person meeting, the partners of the European Connected River project gathered in Paris (France). Over three days, AIVP was responsible for organising workshops, visits and social events. The partners, who had travelled from countries around the North Sea, were thus able to discover the key players and challenges facing Paris’s waterways. The various stakeholders involved with the river came to present their initiatives: the City of Paris, HAROPA, Voies Navigables de France and the Port Community of Paris.

The Connected River project seeks to address how to ensure that waterways and their banks are attractive and safe, and that they allow for a variety of uses without conflict. The Parisian stakeholders were thus able to discover the various experiments developed as part of the project through presentations and workshops, enabling them to adopt the project’s methods.

In turn, the Parisian examples greatly inspired the project stakeholders. Indeed, in Paris, numerous initiatives have been put in place to resolve conflicts of use between logistical needs, urban development, growing public demand for water-based activities, and the needs of the city’s natural environments. In addition to the indoor presentations, a boat trip (with the first fully electric yacht of the Parisian fleet), a walking tour along the Canal Saint-Martin and the Bassin de la Villette, as well as a visit to the Port de Javel Bas (which received the AIVP Antoine Rufenacht Award in 2024) rounded off the overview of the river-related challenges in the French capital.

A cocktail reception held at the residence of the Dutch Ambassador served to strengthen the institutional ties between France and the Netherlands, particularly with regard to cooperation on water management.

This meeting was the penultimate one, ahead of the final event to be held in November in Hamburg (Germany), which will conclude four years of work on the attractiveness and safety of waterways.

Further information on the project: Connected River or contact Noémi Mené, nmene@avp.org