From 18-20 May, we were hosted by our friends at NautaDutilh in Brussels.
Delegates stayed in The Hotel, towering high above the Brussels skyline on the Boulevard de Waterloo, the high-end fashion-shopping street of Brussels.
On Thursday 18th May we were welcomed by Philippe Francois for welcome drinks/walking dinner in NautaDutilh’s offices. The Solaris building is the first truly green office building in Brussels. It is situated just a few minutes from the city centre, near the Boitsfort Hippodrome and the Sonian Forest, the green lung of the Brussels-Capital Region.
The Training Seminar commenced at 9:00am on Friday 19th May with welcomes from our host and John Kerr from the Executive Committee.
There were 5 speakers in all which were followed by the usual Break-Out Groups:
Herman Speyart, NautaDutilh. – Brexit: Horizontal Challenges for the EU and the UK
Paul Robinson, Arthur Cox – Brexit & Ireland, the perspective of the country worst affected
Sabine Klett, Noerr; Philippe Francois, NautaDutilh; Nicolas de Crombrugghe, NautaDutilh – Impact on financial services, corporate, tax and employment law and hidden barriers
AEL would like to thank all those for their excellent and informative presentations and we hope that all delegates found the presentations as interesting as we did. Please do send any ideas for future topics of our AGMs to Helen Cooper.
That evening, dinner was held at De Warande, which is a Flemish business club that strives to bring together distinguished and representative personalities from the Flemish business community. A most enjoyable time was had.
The less formal part of the programme on Saturday 20th May included a visit to the Magritte Museum, which houses works of the Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte. The museum visit was followed by a typical Belgian lunch at Taverne du Passage and evening dinner at Belga Queen, where contemporary architecture and gastronomy meet each other in an amazing way. The restaurant is located in a landmark building dating from the 18th century.
This completed what we felt was a very successful event. Please do submit any feedback/comments to Helen Cooper.
We are very grateful to those at NautaDutilh for a brilliantly organised and successful event.