Europe's dried rivers expose relics, disrupt freight

A brutal summer of heat and scarce rainfall has drained Europe's major rivers to levels not seen in years, dragging up long-buried relics and exposing a fragile link in the continent's supply chain.

The Danube and the Rhine, the two main arteries for inland freight, are both running low. Germany and the Netherlands together handled nearly 72% of the EU's total inland waterway transport in 2025, according to Eurostat. That share is now at risk.

EU inland waterway freight was already down 3% in 2025 from a year earlier, the statistical agency said.

Germany could see a 0.3 percentage-point hit to its GDP growth this year – a loss running into the billions – because of the low water levels, according to ING.

Along the banks, the receding water is revealing what it hid. A resident in Ryahovo, Bulgaria, stumbled on woolly mammoth remains and alerted the Regional History Museum in Ruse.

Krasimir Kirov, a curator and ecologist at the museum, said the discovery is not new – similar finds date back to the mid-20th century. What has changed is the threat to preservation.

"The water plays the role of the conservator of the conditions," Kirov said. "When the level is down and the bones are in contact with the air, this often leads to irreversible damage. Especially if specialists are not able to discover them in time."

Elsewhere along the rivers, World War II-era shipwrecks and other artifacts have emerged.

Richard Lee, a spokesperson for Wetlands International, said in an August 6 video that climate change and decades of dredging and draining have worsened the crisis.

The European Commission's Joint Research Centre forecasts warmer and drier-than-average conditions into September, leaving little hope for a quick recovery.

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