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MARIGOT--High level delegations from France and The Netherlands have joined delegations from St. Martin and St. Maarten for the 2nd Quadri-partite Franco-Netherlands meeting held in the Préfecture on Monday.
This is the first time the meeting has been held in St. Martin. The first meeting took place in The Hague in January 21, 2014, and is held once a year.
A welcome reception and opening ceremony for the respective delegates and technicians were held Sunday evening in the Préfecture hosted by Préfet Philippe Chopin.
The heads of the four delegations are President of the Collectivité Aline Hanson, Prime Minister of St. Maarten Marcel Gumbs, Préfet Philippe Chopin and Director of the Western Hemisphere Department from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands, Maryem van den Heuvel. Each gave a short address ahead of the meeting.
Other notable dignitaries at the reception included French Ambassador for Regional Cooperation in the Antilles-Guiana Region Fred Constant, French Consul General in Amsterdam Christina Vasak and Justice Minister for St. Maarten Dennis Richardson.
Director of Regional Cooperation and European Affairs Alex Richards, a member of the St. Martin delegation, disclosed topics to be discussed at the meeting which were largely the same as those discussed last January.
"At State level police and customs cooperation will be discussed, while at regional level the topics will be education, health, social matters and any other form of cooperation," Richards explained. "One of the things we are planning to do in the meeting is to challenge the State of France to establish a group on the island that will be solely responsible for all matters of cooperation."
Maryem van den Heuvel told The Daily Herald that part of the agenda at the first meeting was to get to know each other better.
"Things are organised in different ways, whether on French side or Dutch side and division of competences are really different," she said. "It was important to get to know the institutional order on both sides. We talked about all kinds of issues and we are very happy to continue the talks and I'm confident we will have a good atmosphere."
Asked what specific decisions came out of the first meeting a year ago, she replied: "Decisions were made to exchange information, exchange point of contacts and find more information about EU programmes that both sides of the island could benefit from. So, that was a concrete follow up to the different issues.
"When you encounter a specific problem, you want to know who is responsible on the other side and who to talk to. We determined a list of working groups and points of contacts."
On the police cooperation treaty she noted that this still has to be ratified in the French Senate before it can enter into force, but could not say exactly when that would be. It has already been ratified in the Dutch Parliament and in the lower house of the French Parliament (National Assembly).
Prime Minister Marcel Gumbs in his address emphasised that in order to have effective cooperation one must first have stability and continuity. Alluding to the changeover of Préfets, usually every three years, he said he hoped Préfet Chopin would stay on, at least as long as he is in Government, which drew a round of laughter.
"I am thinking we should ask Foreign Affairs in The Hague to encourage Paris not to change Préfets too often," he said. "We need continuity and stability, because there are too many issues that have to be dealt with at State level between French Republic and Country St. Maarten. If every three years we have a new Préfet, he has to get accustomed to how it all works. That's two steps forward and four steps back.
"We also have to maintain stability on the Dutch side. We've had three governments in four years. That's not good for the Dutch side and not good for cooperation."
Préfet Chopin closed the opening ceremony by presenting the Préfecture medal to the leaders of the delegations.
