Flemish have for tackling imminent flooding
Prime Minister Matthias Diependaele (N-VA) and the French Foreign Minister, Jean Noël Barrot, signed a treaty in Lille. Or rather, the updating of a treaty between France and Belgium that goes back to 1890, and was continued in 1968. It was urgent to refresh.
De Moeren in Veurne is a cross -border polder landscape and also the lowest point in our country. Excess water now goes through the Dunkirk-Nieuwpoort through our country through the Dunkirk-Nieuwpoort canal, but that will now also be easier via France. For this, Flanders and France have renewed the dated Moeren Convention.
Maxim Veys, chairman of the Flemish Waterweg: “That anchores everything legally. On today, the relationships are good, but if you want to increase that flow rate, if you want to drain more water – and that is absolutely necessary – then that is now possible on the basis of that treaty.”
“That gives us the opportunity to raise the level in the Veurne-Duinkerke canal without protesting from the French side,” says the deputy of the province of Bart Naeyaert. “But that agreed level is also interesting if we want to release water from the IJzer towards Dunkirk.”