Duncan Roberts: Luxembourg and Belgium recently concluded several agreements at the so-called Gäichel bilateral summit, the most impactful of which is obviously the extension of the cross-border working period. How important is the new agreement in the context of the post-pandemic shift being made by many companies to allow more teleworking?
Thomas Lambert: I think it is particularly important. We struck a compromise, because, at present, it’s not too clear which way it will go. Will we all go back to normal as far as the pre-covid telework rate is concerned? I test the waters with the people I meet, and you have people who say, “Oh, God, I’m so glad to be able to go back to the office”. And then you have other people who say it gave them a better balance with family life, for whom it was a positive experience. You hear different perceptions from employees and employers.
Also, because we have vast uncertainties looming. So, we agreed on telework flexibility, be it in the context of covid, or structural agreements. It is a compromise. And it is a compromise that takes into account the interests of both countries, but also the interests of the citizens themselves.
I think that’s the big red line in our excellent bilateral relations. Most of the agreements are not particularly sexy. It’s about dry stuff, little stuff, that helps people in this cross-border reality of the Greater Region.
There was also an agreement on managing emergencies and civil security. What sort of concrete form could this take, and were any of the details or the urgency of this agreement impacted by the devastating floods that affected both countries in July?
That was on track already. We already had legal instruments for mutual cooperation. I remember that when the floods started, I was having dinner in a restaurant with my wife, and I got a phone call from my minister’s cabinet to ask Luxembourg for assistance. I got in touch with the Luxembourg side, but they said, ‘Well, it’s very nice of you to call us, but we’re already on the way’. I had a similar experience when I was informed that we had a rogue soldier, Jürgen Conings [suspected of extreme-right views, he had gone missing in June after stealing arms from a military base and threatening public figures]. I got the relevant Luxembourg colleague on the phone and he said, ‘Just so you know, we’re already on the spot’.
Very often ambassadors have to run after the facts. The mechanisms are so well oiled that we barely need to urge Luxembourg to take action. They are much faster than I can act. And that is a very good sign.
Looking ahead to this November’s COP26 summit, what are the main challenges and opportunities Belgium faces in terms of climate change?
We are, of course, ambitious, you know, to prepare our society for necessary transformations. ‘Fit for 55’ is an objective that we subscribe to, even though internally, because there is also a large regional competency in Belgium, we want to look at how the efforts will have to be divided, at the burden sharing, that will be inevitable.
Our [respective] ministers for energy had a very good discussion [at the Gäichel summit] on the perspectives for hydrogen and wind energy cooperation. Luxembourg is investing with Denmark in an energy island, and there may be a backbone from that island along the North Sea also going to Belgium and involving Belgian companies. And so, you can close the loop.
Hydrogen is very promising as well. I will be talking to my minister’s office on how to set up a workshop or a seminar here in Luxembourg, preferably in a Benelux context on how we can move forward. Because the Benelux countries are forerunners on hydrogen and we have very promising projects in all three countries, like the truck tanking station that will be inaugurated, I believe, in spring 2022 here in Berchem.
The [A400M] treaty came after quite a risky live operation and questions like responsibility, who does what, were not even invoked. And that, for me, is a sign of very deep trust between the two countries…
Over the summer we also witnessed the withdrawal from Afghanistan. That showed that Belgium-Luxembourg cooperation on the A400M military plane was working well even before the formal signing at the recent summit. But what does the actual agreement entail in practical terms for the Luxembourg plane and crew?
It’s basically an agreement that is about joint management of the transport wing. So, it’s not just about that one Luxembourg aircraft, it’s the entire fleet, which consists of eight planes. But you need to know, the crews are mixed. They no longer make the distinction on the basis of nationality, or of the plane or of the crew, the loadmaster, or what have you. And they also use Findel as a landing and take-off zone for that unit.
It’s one team, but what happens if there is a purely national operation? Let’s say you have to evacuate just Belgian people from an unnamed country in Africa. Can we then use the Luxembourg plane or not? The treaty says yes, unless the Luxembourg side pulls the red card, as the military people say, and tells us they would rather we didn’t. Can Luxembourg crew be used for purely national Belgian operations? Yes, unless the red card is pulled. What if there is an accident, what’s the state’s responsibility? It’s those little details that are set out in that treaty.
But, as you say, the treaty came after quite a risky live operation and questions like responsibility, who does what, were not even invoked. And that, for me, is a sign of very deep trust between the two countries and, above all, between the two militaries. Many Luxembourg officers are trained and are still being trained in Brussels. So, we know them, and they know us.
In terms of bilateral trade, Luxembourg is very important for Belgium. I think many of our readers would be surprised that, in fact, Luxembourg imports more from Belgium than from its larger neighbouring countries, France and Germany.
It’s sometimes funny when, as a Dutch speaker, I go to Delhaize here and see everything is like in Brussels, with bilingual Dutch and French labels. Yes, our bilateral relations are deeply rooted and the Gäichel summit was the perfect example of that. One little disappointment from my side is that it was not covered at all by the Flemish press. Not one mention of it. And that tells me that there is some work to do for bilateral ambassadors and regional colleagues. Because Flanders has very large competences also for foreign trade and they’re very ambitious at that level. They go to India, to the United States… It is my personal opinion that they don’t do enough to see the low-hanging fruit with their neighbour, and I think we need to work on that in the coming years.
But we have several missions coming up. The Brussels minister for multilingualism is coming to talk with ministers Meisch and Hansen to see whether we can learn something from the Luxembourg linguistic situation… to take a look at the vertical multilingualism at school and how they deal with it. Of course, you cannot copy-paste that, but you can be inspired by it.
We recently had a visit by the Walloon minister-president Elio Di Rupo, who met with [economy] minister Fayot to set up a working group of civil servants to work on space policy cooperation. He will return in December to see how that working group is progressing. At Gäichel there was a meeting of federal competences and cooperation in the field of the United Nations to try to develop a framework for the peaceful exploration and exploitation of space resources.
And then in April next year the Antwerp Chamber of Commerce will come to Luxembourg. They are attaching quite some importance to that visit, illustrated by the fact that both their CEO and chairman of the board will attend. They want to see how Luxembourg is evolving beyond the cliché of the financial sector--the supercomputer is obviously very interesting, the space sector, whatever is happening in and around Uni.lu at Belval, what Luxembourg is doing on renewable energy, digital embassies, electrifying cars, public transport and the famous Luxembourg tram.
That is a stepping stone approach to what I want to achieve, which is a fully fledged Flemish economic mission to Luxembourg.
Luxembourg is on that crossroads, and that is exactly why the Antwerp Chamber of Commerce wants to come to Luxembourg.
You have previously mentioned the logistics sector as playing a vital role, and especially the new smart port in Antwerp. Can you explain a little more?
I'm personally very enthusiastic about that. Antwerp is the second biggest port in Europe, and one of three European ports that are still in the top 20 in the world. They are working very hard to digitise the port to make it ready for ‘Fit for 55’. That is a big challenge for the number two petrochemical cluster in the world.
Hydrogen and electric tugs will be introduced, along with hydrogen and electric trucks and the elephants, as we call them, the big cranes that move about in the port.
They are also introducing at breakneck speed a quayside stream network. Very often ships, when they’re in the port, they keep their engines running because they need electricity. That’s diesel based and extremely polluting. So, the policy is now to electrify the docksides so that they can switch off the diesel engines and plug in into the Antwerp network, which is to a large extent wind energy driven and will be introducing green hydrogen.
Of course, international shipping has so far largely escaped the green trend, but it’s only a matter of time until the maritime and airline industries have to adapt.
You were referring specifically to NxtPort, which is a data sharing partnership between the port of Antwerp and the 40 biggest companies in the port, most of them being petrochemical, the pilot operators and the Flemish traffic agency and so forth. They have data on the positioning of containers, even on board ships that are still at sea. They will merge that data with the data from the train operators, the truck operators, the traffic system, so that they will be able to optimise the time spent in the port of every individual container. They can avoid unnecessary moving back and forth of containers. Ideally, we need to come to one movement for one container. We’re now at, I think, two or three on average, which is already very efficient. But if you can bring it down to just one, you can position your trucks and your trains so that you can pick up your containers much faster.
On the basis of the data clouds, you can also start creating spot markets for individual products in containers, so that they can change their destination even while the containers are still at sea.
With NxtPort, you will be able to know whether an individual container carrying, say bananas, was on top of the ship in the full sun, so it’s more perishable and has to move quicker. If a container was bound for Aldi in Germany, for example, and they have an oversupply [of bananas], they are put up for sale and might be bought by Carrefour in France or by Albert Heijn in the Netherlands. Also, we are already able to do all the shipping formalities before the ship docks.
And then, last but not least, you also contribute to security and the fight against organised crime. Because you will be able to set up what we call a certified pickup by the freighter, so that you significantly reduce the time the container sits idle on the dock, and that’s delicate because that’s when drugs are taken out, or put in, etc. And the port is too big to supervise all the containers. I do not dare to mention the very low percentage of containers that can be inspected.
They will also be working with flying and sailing drones to inspect the entire port area, which is enormous. They are introducing sniffer sensors to detect abnormal scents if there is something odd with the petrochemical exhausts. They are introducing a system of 600 cameras that can detect patterns in the port and sound the alarm if something weird is happening.
All of that is creating an ecosystem which will produce spin-offs, not just for the whole of society, but also for the upstream and downstream logistical connections. That brings me to Luxembourg, because an international port like Antwerp, or Antwerp-Zeebrugge, as it has become, is also looking at what is happening upstream. So, the connection to Athus, Arlon, Bettembourg and Dudelange, and even beyond, connecting to China, even though that’s not been a big success for the moment, is of interest to Antwerp. Luxembourg is on that crossroads, and that is exactly why the Antwerp Chamber of Commerce wants to come to Luxembourg. And Luxembourg, of course, is also a world class centre for financial solutions to all this. Not just the Luxembourg financial sector, but also the presence of the European Investment Bank is very interesting for us.
But the message that we acknowledge is that whenever you upgrade that [Brussels-Luxembourg] train connection, there needs to be a business case for it…
Talking of efficiency, the problem of connectivity between Luxembourg and Brussels is a recurring bugbear for frequent travellers between the two European capitals. Little concrete progress was announced at the Gäichel summit. What can the respective governments do to get things moving, so to speak?
First and foremost, we share the analysis that something needs to be done. Both our ministers [Georges Gilkinet and François Bausch] are eye to eye on it. It’s at that point in time where they said: ‘look, we’ve always dealt with it in a bilateral way, now there’s Europe… We’re hopefully at the end of a crisis-stricken era, we need to invest into competitiveness, into the recovery plan. And at the same time, money is very cheap.’
So, we have a number of opportunities that we can seize here. And they agreed on seizing two European commissioners, Madame [Adina-Ioana] Vallier for transport and Mr [Frans] Timmermans, because he’s ‘Mr Green Deal’. They wrote an official letter and they got a very positive official reply.
But my transport minister had a bilateral meeting after the Gäichel summit with EIB vice-president Kris Peeters, who happens to be a Belgian and is also in charge of the transport policy of the EIB. They discussed the train connection and the financing needs, and I understand the meeting went well. The EIB has very deep roots with public transport systems, bridges, infrastructure, etc. And it has a very deep expertise on both the technical aspects of those projects and the financing needs.
But the message that we acknowledge is that whenever you upgrade that train connection, there needs to be a business case for it… because you have the perspective of the liberalisation of European train connections and operators. So, you need to present them with an economically viable case. That could mean extending the connection, so it’s not just Brussels-Luxembourg, but also Strasbourg, maybe Bern and maybe even Chiasso, on the Italian border. But if you want an efficient connection, you also need to reduce the number of stops. Maybe, personally off the top of my head, that means Brussels-Namur-Arlon-Luxembourg and then beyond.
So, no, there was no spectacular progress, but there is good energy. If at the same time our telecommunications ministers talk about rolling out 5G on board trains, it connects with the mobility issue between Brussels and Luxembourg. I’m pretty hopeful, even though it’s going to take a lot of time and will only see the light of day well beyond my stay here in Luxembourg.