On 21 July, Belgium marks its National Day, the anniversary of the day in 1831 when King Leopold I took the constitutional oath as the country's first monarch. As we mark this occasion, allow me, on behalf of the Kingdom of Belgium, to extend my deepest condolences to His Majesty the King, the Royal Family, and the people of Thailand on the passing of Her Royal Highness Princess Bajrakitiyabha. Her Royal Highness’ dedication to public service, justice and humanitarian work will be remembered with deep respect.
This is also my first National Day in Thailand. I arrived in Bangkok with my wife, Chiemi Miyahisa, last August, taking up a posting that also covers Laos and Cambodia, and presented my credentials to His Majesty the King soon after. This year also happens to mark 158 years since Belgium and Siam, as Thailand was then known, signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce that first formalised relations between our two kingdoms in 1868. Eleven months into my own posting, what has struck me most is how alive that long friendship still feels, well beyond the trade figures that place Belgium as Thailand's 32nd largest trading partner worldwide and fifth among EU member states.
Some of that friendship's newest chapters are being written at the European level. Brussels and Bangkok are working through a free trade agreement intended to widen market access and support sustainable development on both sides. Negotiators closed six more chapters at the ninth round of talks in Brussels this June, bringing the total agreed to seventeen of twenty-four, with a further round held end of September in Thailand. As the city that hosts the European Union's institutions, Belgium follows this process with particular interest, knowing how much a concluded agreement could mean for businesses and consumers in both regions.
Belgian business is also putting down roots here in a very literal sense. In Chonburi, the family company behind the Biscoff cookie, Lotus Bakeries, brought its first Asian factory into production, with cookies made in Thailand reaching customers across the Asia-Pacific region by the end of last year. It is a small, sweet example of a larger pattern: Belgian know-how, increasingly made in Thailand for the region.
Thailand is also preparing to welcome a rather different kind of Belgian export. Tomorrowland, the electronic music festival that began two decades ago in a small Belgian town, will stage its first full-scale Asian edition in Chonburi this December. It says something about Thailand's pull, and about how far Belgian creativity now travels, that organisers chose this country over every other option in the region.
Quieter, but in some ways more lasting, is the scientific bond now taking shape. Belgium's national fund for scientific research and Thailand's National Research Council recently agreed to deepen cooperation through researcher exchanges and joint projects, building on agreements signed last October between Thailand's BIOTEC and the universities of Louvain and Ghent. In March, the Royal Thai Embassy in Brussels and Thailand's Eastern Economic Corridor Office also brought Belgian and Thai businesses together to explore cooperation in the bio-circular-green economy, an area where Belgian expertise in biotechnology, clean energy and recycling has much to offer. These are the kinds of partnerships that tend to outlast any single ambassador's term, which is exactly why they matter.
As Belgium marks 195 years since that constitutional oath, I do so this year with quiet gratitude rather than festivity express my gratitude for the welcome Thailand has given my wife and me and for a friendship that, at 158 years and counting, still finds new things to build. My thoughts, and those of everyone at the Embassy, remain with the Thai people during this time of mourning.
My warmest wishes, all the same, to the people of the Kingdom of Thailand on this Belgian National Day.
HE Mr Michel Parys Ambassador of Belgium to
Thailand
