The Region listens to the Municipalities

With the start of the new year, our top management gave itself a Herculean task: individually meeting with Mayors and Aldermen for Business and the Middle Class in the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region to take stock of their expectations and get a list of their needs. This massive dialogue has helped to define the priorities that need to be addressed at a local level.

“The relationship between hub.brussels and the municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region are one of the most important ways we have of conducting a cohesive and effective regional policy across our region.” stresses out Isabelle Grippa, General Director of hub.brussels.

Strong ties with local authorities were already in place before the fusion of Atrium.brussels, Impulse.brussels, and Brussels Invest & Export, which on 1 January 2018 resulted in the creation of hub.brussels.

The framework agreements in place between Atrium.brussels and the Region’s municipalities at the time, which aimed to allow them to conduct a variety of activities in concert, continued until their “natural” end, when the municipal term of office came to an end in 2018. The goal was therefore to renew synergies to reassure local partners of our support and our commitment to achieving their goals.

Face-to-face meetings to list expectations

The aim of these meetings with municipal authorities was to speak with newly elected officials to forge solid bonds of mutual trust and to learn about their plans for the local economy and their expectations of what our services have to offer.

These very constructive foundations have already allowed us to establish the basis for a shared framework agreement, to which project agreements specific to each municipality should be annexed.

“Let’s meet hub”: transforming expectations into concrete action

On Friday, 1 February 2019, our Agency extended an invitation to representatives from Brussels-area municipalities, including all of the Brussels-Capital Region’s mayors and the Aldermen for Public Works, City Planning, the Economy, and Business.

The goal? To inform the municipalities about the services on offer from the new Agency, both as beneficiaries of our services and as go-betweens who pass on information to our audience: entrepreneurs.

“The desired outcome”, explains Françoise Lambotte, hub.brussels’s Partnerships & Networks Department, “is for the assistance we offer to businesses to be fully understood by our local partners so that we can forge robust partnerships with each of the region’s municipalities, and that it can lead to a strong partnership, with a list of priorities and a clearly defined framework.”

These meetings will ordinarily result in the signature of new framework agreements beginning in March 2019.