Bega River is 254 km long, of which 178 km are in Romania and 76 km in Serbia. It springs in the Poiana Rusca mountains to the northeast of Timisoara, part of the Carpathian Mountains, and it flows into the Tisa in Serbia and thereafter into the Danube.

Bega Canal is located in the West part of Timis County and is one of the few artificial waterways in Romania. It is 44 km long in Romania and was the first navigable canal built in the country. The navigable part of the Bega Canal starts in Timisoara, then flows to Southwest, crosses the Romanian Serbian border, and continues 72 km in Southwest direction, to the river Tisa.

The canal has been in operation for more than 250 years. The Bega Canal works started in 1728, and it was used as a transportation route for construction timber and for the drainage of the surrounding marshlands. In 1760, the construction of the double connection Bega - Timis Rivers and the related hydro-technical works at Costei and Topolovat were completed and almost continuous navigation was established. The Dutch engineer Maximilian Fremaut made the project plan for these works. From the very beginning, the canal fulfilled an important hydrological and economical function in the Bega – Timis system, which covers a great part of the Banat Region. Over the years the Canal has been extended and always repaired. In 1931 a peak of volume in navigation on the Bega Canal was reached. After World War II the traffic fell below 50 tons per year. This downward flow of navigation combined with the absence of regular maintenance led to cessation of the traffic on the Bega Canal in 1958. This resulted in a serious deterioration of the environmental situation, especially of the water quality.

The Bega Canal was revived after 1990, as an opportunity for regional and European interest. The feasibility study on the rehabilitation of the Bega Canal developed with the financial support of the Government of the Netherlands, has identified, the necessary work to revitalize the ecological, hydrological functions and the navigation. A similar study was conducted on the Serbian side. Although the Bega Canal represents for Timisoara an opportunity for sustainable economic development, this study remained at the project stage.

Currently, within Timisoara city limits, with the exception of several small and leisure boats, only the dredges of Banat River Administration are moving on the Canal, with the purpose of cleaning it. Also, consideration was given to the idea of connecting Timisoara to the navigation system Rhine-Main-Danube, which connects the North Sea with the Black Sea. In order to reopen the navigation on the Bega Canal and to boost the tourism in the area, there are some measures to be taken.

 Main features of the canal area

The Banat Basin is bordered by Serbia to the west and Hungary to the Northwest. It covers an area of 18,320 km2 which is approximately 7.7% of Romania and includes seven smaller river catchment areas: Aranca, Bega, Timis, Caras, Nera, Cerna, and Danube (littoral areas), all sub-basins of the Danube river. Of the 7 sub-basins, the Timis River and the Bega River sub-basins are the two largest. The Timis river has a length of approximately 240 km and covers an area of about 5,673 sqkm. The upper reaches of the Timis River are generally steep, flowing for approximately 120 km through the mountain area and the lower reaches of the river from the City of Lugoj to the Serbian border are flat and low-lying in character.