First step towards investment agreements without Wallonia

Flemish Minister-President Geert Bourgeois has reached an agreement to investigate how Flanders can conclude open asymmetric investment agreements without the other federal entities. After all, for a year and half now, Wallonia and Brussels have been blocking various different investment agreements. “On camera Wallonia joins Flanders in going on international trade missions, but at the same time it refuses to protect the investments of our companies abroad. Go figure...” says Flemish MP Karl Vanlouwe.

Via the Belgium-Luxembourg Economic Union (BLEU), Flanders has already entered into 90 bilateral investment agreements with third countries. Those agreements encourage foreign investments and create a framework that provides legal certainty and stability for our companies. “However, despite the Community standstill, it seems that adversarial federalism has recently been the favourite tune of Wallonia and Brussels,” says Karl Vanlouwe. “The Language border The language border between a Flemish and a French-speaking area was permanently established in the period from 1962 to 1963. The Brussels-Capital district, with 19 municipalities, became officially bilingual. The language border was not a Flemish invention. Since the beginning of the 20th century, French-speakers, and certainly the socialists, have strongly advocated for monolingual areas in Belgium. Today, Flemings want respect for the language border and the bilingual nature of Brussels. language border veto is unacceptable and has disastrous consequences for our Flemish companies.” For example, there is the case in Panama where a Flemish dredging company cannot proceed, while its competitors can. In that case there is an amount of over 1 billion euros at stake.

“Coalition of the willing”

In total there are 51 BLEU agreements that are currently blocked. There are 6 BLEU agreements that have been signed, but which Wallonia and/or Brussels refuse to ratify. In addition there are 9 BLEU agreements that have been initialled but not signed. Finally there are 36 countries with which Flanders wishes to enter into an agreement, but where negotiations cannot even start because of a French-language veto. Luxembourg is in any case no longer waiting for Wallonia and Brussels, and has decided to conclude three investment agreements by itself. According to Minister-President Geert Bourgeois it is possible for Flanders too to conclude agreements without the other federal entities but in association with the federal level and with Luxembourg. Karl Vanlouwe expressed his support for that “coalition of the willing”: “Nobody is forced to take part, but those who do want to make progress may no longer be held back.”