On September 22, 2021, Julie Bynens, Secretary General of Flanders Chancellery and Foreign Office, and Bartosz Grodecki, Deputy Minister of the Polish Ministry of the Interior, signed a new Flanders-Poland work programme for the period 2021-2023.
Poland was the first foreign partner with which Flanders concluded an agreement in 1994. It was also one of the first and most important beneficiaries of Flanders’ Cooperation Programme 'Central and Eastern Europe'. This resulted in numerous structural ties that still result in concrete cooperation in the fields of culture, health care, trade, agriculture, language, education, remembrance education, youth policy, etc.
At the request of Flanders, new themes, such as the circular economy and human rights in the context of Holocaust commemoration and labor market policy, were given attention in the 2021-2023 work programme. The meeting in Warsaw gave Thomas Castrel, the new General Representative of Flanders for Poland and the Baltic States, the opportunity to introduce himself.
