Twenty years after the European single currency was agreed in Maastricht, the international appeal of this historic provincial city appears to be fading in line with that of the currency that it is known for.

Thanks to poor mutual understanding on both sides of the border; thanks to French-language trade unions in the Liège area, just across the border in Belgium’s Wallonia; thanks to a narrowminded view of the world in the boardrooms of the Dutch and Belgian railway operators; and thanks to a general lack of interest in a proper connection to Brussels among regional and national Dutch policymakers, the direct steel umbilical between Maastricht and Brussels was severed on the 9th of December.

Dutch authorities may not even have noticed. The website for the Maastricht-Brussels Express was still online when this post was published, six weeks after the service was discontinued.

NMBS management in July took the unilateral decision to scrap the service by not renewing the contract that was negotiated five years ago with the Dutch authorities and Dutch railway operator NS. NMBS was heavily influenced by a petition that Walloon trade unions and the socialists conducted last Spring, asking for support to scrap the ‘hop’ to Maastricht. They collected more than one thousand signatures in Wallonia.

A similar poll, conducted by yours truly last October and November, after NMBS plans to scrap the Maastricht service were disclosed, attracted about 481 signatories in Maastricht and Brussels by Christmas. But by then it was too late.

Walloon trade unions heralded it the SNCB decision as good news for passengers traveling from the greater Liège area to Brussels. No longer would the 12-minute hop to Maastricht make their Intercity miss the narrow time slots on the high-speed rail track connecting Brussels and Liège. SNCB staff often blamed the delays on the holdups in Maastricht, where Dutch railway inspectors regularly tested the language skills of SNCB train drivers and conductors. Many of them have been fined in recent years because they did not even have a basic understanding of Dutch. Because of accidents like this one, Dutch train safety law has become more stringent and requires Dutch-language staff to be on board on all trains driving on Dutch tracks.

Current Belgian trains in Maastricht first saw service in 1939

So now, in the year that Maastricht is bidding for the position of European Cultural Capital in 2018, its only railway connection to the rest of Europe is via a local slow train, with an over-aged MS65 train model that first saw service in Belgium in 1939! That’s a far cry from the comfortable Intercity that drove as a slow train on the track from Maastricht to Liège, and then, once departing Liège Guillemins station, accelerated up to 180 km/h on the high-speed track to make it to Brussels 40 minutes later.

So are things really that bad now? Not really. The same Intercity trains no longer depart from Maastricht, but they still do depart from Visé, a small, ugly station just across the border south of Maastricht that’s literally on the banks of the river Meuse. From there, SNCB Intercity trains still depart every weekday at 715 and 815, due to arrive in Brussels at 827 and 927, respectively. The commuter trains at the end of the day from Brussels also return directly to Visé. Passengers to Maastricht are advised to change at Liège Guillemins; their total journey now takes about 15 minutes longer than before the 9th of December. That extra half hour on a return journey makes it stretch just above what is acceptable for a daily commute.

The good thing about Visé is that it hosts a large free parking. Another advantage of departing here is that one can travel with a so-called RailPass ticket, ideal for commuters. This Rail Pass can’t be used on the Dutch track.

Leaving from Visé remains attractive

I still try to make my commute to Brussels go via Visé at least two times a week. If the Intercity shows up, it’s great. But there’s no guarantee that that will actually happen. Between 9 Dec. and Christmas, when the new schedule was introduced, I ended up getting back into my car to drive to Brussels from Visé twice because of wildcat Walloon railway strikes. Two other times, a 1939-MS65 slow train arrived late to take passengers to Liège.

Despite the unreliable service, I still try to commute via Visé at least twice a week. Reading the digital newspapers on a tablet certainly beats being stuck in traffic near Louvain and Brussels, and being forced to listen to uninspring Belgian news radio stations. (The BBC World Service Europe broadcasts on 648 AM unfortunately were scrapped last year.) The costs of the commute, thanks to the Rail Pass, at the moment are roughly similar to the costs of gasoline.

So far, it’s clear that ‘scrapping the Maastricht hop’ has done absolutely nothing for the punctuality of the Belgian trains going to Brussels. Walloon trade unions, rooted, especially in the greater Liège area, in a hard-core socialist steel worker culture, are still the biggest obstacle that commuters have to overcome. They still have to catch up with the 21st century.

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SITTARD-GELEEN, the Netherlands — A Dutch public-private partnership involving Royal DSM NV, Maastricht University and regional authorities on Thursday said it has agreed to accelerate the development of the Chemelot Research Campus in the south of the Netherlands.

The plan makes available an extra €180 million for new R&D facilities, a public-private venture capital fund and two new university degree programs in bio-based materials. The group also said its partners committed themselves to jointly operating the facilities at the Chemelot site for at least ten years.

The funds can help create more than 1,300 new full-time jobs in the next eighth years at Chemelot, the group said. The number of people employed with companies at Chemelot would more than double to 2,460 from 1,140 now. Several thousand additional new jobs are to be created as a result of direct and indirect economic spin-offs.

“Today, the veil of negativity in our region is definitely lifted,” said Mark Verheyen, representative of the Province of Limburg, at a press conference.

The province plans to contribute €55 million in new funds to Chemelot, on top of €15 million it already committed a year ago. Its contribution is subject to approval of the provincial parliament.

Chemelot is a large industrial chemical site in the south of the Netherlands created after the Dutch coal mines were closed in the 1960s. DSM and Saudi Arabia’s Sabic Europe are major operators here. Other companies on the site are Basic Pharma of the Netherlands, Belgium’s Tigenix and Japan’s Sekisui. German speciality chemicals group Lanxess and Amsterdam-based research and technology company Avantium are set to expand their facilities at Chemelot. Avantium recently signed a contract with The Coca-Cola Company to produce bottles from plant-based plastic.

Long-term commitment

DSM, Province of Limburg and Maastricht University said they have agreed to jointly manage the Chemelot Research Campus from the beginning of this year. Each partner has committed itself to a 33.3 percent stake in the consortium for the next ten years, with an option for a further five years.

“The Chemelot Campus will be set up and managed as a company focused on innovation, continuity and growth,“ the group said. “The experience with reference campuses in Cambridge, Leuven and Eindhoven has shown that setting up a campus requires a very long time. Long-term commitment is essential.”

DSM commits €1 billion

The consortium said it expects to invest a total of €72.5 million in campus facilities in the next ten years.

DSM Nederland Director Atzo Nicolai said DSM’s total commitment to Chemelot now stands at €100 million per year, bringing its total funds committed to Chemelot to €1 billion for the next ten years.

“What happens here is that we are developing tangible, practical cooperation between three parties. DSM is making a commitment, maybe going against the flow,” said Nicolai, referring to current economic conditions. “But I’m very confident that we can turn this into a success.”

Enabling Technologies

The group agreed to create a company called Enabling Technologies BV, which will see a €2.3 million euro investment from each of the three partners. This company will provide advanced research facilities on top of the existing infrastructure at the site. The involvement of the province means small and medium-sized companies, academics and start-ups in the region can also benefit from the R&D facilities at Chemelot, it said.

Enabling Technologies will also make possible connecting the research with that at Maastricht Health Campus, located near Maastricht University, some 20 kilometers south of Chemelot. Both sites will house a Joint Facility Center. The two centers will be digitally connected so that they can monitor each other’s research as it’s conducted.

“This is the second major boost for our region’s economy in 30 years. It’s incredibly important,” Guy Peeters, Chief Executive of UMC+, the Medical Centre at Maastricht University, referring to the Dutch government’s decision during the 1970s to create regional jobs in the chemicals industry after coal mines closed.

“We’re now creating the healthiest region of the Netherlands,” said Peeters, himself a former physician.

As part of the R&D campus announcement, Maastricht University said it would offer a Masters program in Bio-based Materials at Chemelot Campus, and a Masters in Systems Biology at the Maastricht Health Campus. It expects these programs will attract approximately 150 students.

“Economic growth depends on inspiring the right people,” said Martin Paul, Chairman of the Board of Management of Maastricht University.

At Chemelot, Maastricht University will set up the Research Institute for Biobased Materials, it said, together with the RWTH technical university from Aachen, just across the border in Germany.

Public-private venture capital fund

To further entice companies to choose Chemelot as their business location, the province and DSM are creating a new public-private venture capital fund, together with a handful of regional investors. The fund will be called Limburg Ventures II and will have available between €50 and €80 million.

The fund is expected to provide about 40 investments in its first nine years, ranging between €250,000 and €8 million per investment, a statement said. The main focus will be on Chemelot. The estimated return of the fund is foreseen at 7 percent.

The Chemelot Campus is one of six major technology campuses in the Netherlands.

Boosting its development fits with the Dutch government’s Brainport 2020 ‘Top Economy, Smart Society’ initiative, which aspires turning the south-east of the Netherlands into an internationally competitive knowledge-based region.

The development also matches the European Union’s Europe2020 program, which seeks to encourage “smart, durable and inclusive” economic growth.

- By Raymond Frenken in Sittard-Geleen, raymond.frenken@whitebull.eu (+31 6 5156 2360)

Chemelot Research Campus Attracts €180 Million by Raymond Frenken is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at whitebull.eu.