Vietnam, Belgium’s Wallonia-Brussels sign cooperation document for new period

The signing of the document can be viewed as an important outcome of the 12th meeting of the permanent joint committee between the Government of Vietnam and the French-speaking community of Belgium known as Wallonie-Bruxelles, the Wallonia region, and the French Community Commission (COCOF) in the Brussels Capital Region. The November 18 to November 19 meeting was co-chaired by Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Tran Quoc Phuong; and Pascale Delcomminette, general director of Wallonie-Bruxelles International (WBI). Vietnamese Ambassador to Belgium Nguyen Van Thao also attended the event.

Under the terms of the document, the co-operation programme, with 17 projects, will focus on common goals across priority areas, such as healthcare, environmental protection, logistics, human resource training, sustainable agriculture, French teaching, international law, climate change adaptation, and innovation research.

At the meeting, Delcomminette and Deputy Minister Phuong hailed the results that both sides have achieved in human resources training, applied research, and industrial development.

According to statistics relating to the co-operation programme for the 2022 to 2024 period, the two sides have made a total of 184 working trips, including 143 by Belgian experts to Vietnam and 41 by Vietnamese experts to Belgium.

Most notably, the programme has granted 194 scholarships to Vietnamese students, lecturers, researchers, and staff. Up to two-thirds of the scholarship recipients are women, of which more than half of the scholarships are dedicated to research, supporting the goals and activities of the projects in the programme.