Flanders-Artsakh Parliamentary Friendship Group Established

On 18 October Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan visited the Flemish Parliament in Brussels, met with a group of its members and attended the solemn ceremony of establishing the Flanders-Artsakh Friendship Group.

President Sahakyan extended gratitude to all those who spared no efforts to establish the Friendship Group, noting that as a symbol of sincere friendship between Flanders and Artsakh the group signaled the willingness to develop bilateral relations and adherence to universal values.

The Head of the State underlined that Flanders was the oldest center of the Armenian Diaspora in the territory of the present day Belgium, where the Armenian community for centuries had been a unique bridge between the West and the East, their historical homeland and this beautiful country, adding that such a rich history of relations, naturally, would have a positive impact on the current period too.

Belgium is a federal state, with 4 relatively autonomous regions and governments: Flanders in the north, where the language is Dutch (“Flemish”), Wallonia in the south, where the language is French, the East Cantons where the language is German, and the centrally located Brussels, which is officially bilingual (French and Dutch). Almost half of the 10 million population of Belgium lives in Flanders.