ABSTRACT
Figure 3.1 The development of the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine since 1919 30
Figure 3.2 Adam Smith’s defence of free trade (1776) 31
Cooperation aimed at free navigation of international rivers
The main economic issue on the agenda of the Congress of Vienna was securing freedom of navigation on international rivers. Whereas the use of rivers was suited to modern water transport, the existing systems of legal and other tolls, dating from the Middle Ages, were increasingly regarded as impediments to the promotion of trade. The Congress of Vienna therefore made provisions to secure the freedom of navigation on the Rhine and other international rivers by creating a form of international authority in order to remove tolls and other obstacles. The principle of free navigation had been discussed before. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the doctrine of innocent passage was developed for situations where the use of rivers caused no harm or damage to riparian states. After the French Revolution, France had used its might to open the Scheldt and Meuse rivers and had argued that the Rhine should also be opened. This resulted in the removal of some existing regulations, and in 1804 France and the Hapsburg Empire agreed to consider the Rhine as common to them both as far as navigation was concerned. They made arrangements for a joint toll system and police administration and established a ‘common authority’ in Mainz. This first effective experiment in setting up a regime for an international river lasted for ten years. Its experiences played a role during the peace settlements of 1814-15. In May 1814 Article 5 of the Treaty of Paris declared the principle of free navigation. ‘The navigation of the Rhine, from the point where it becomes navigable to the sea, and vice versa, shall be free, so that it can be interdicted to no one.’ The
ways in which the dues were to be levied and other aspects were to be discussed by the Congress of Vienna, but these should be regulated ‘in the mode the most impartial and the most favourable to the commerce of all nations’ (cited in Lyons 1963, 54).
