Kris Van de Poel will be General Secretary of the Taalunie from 1 March. The linguistics professor of the University of Antwerp succeeds the Dutch Hans Bennis who is retiring. The Taalunie is the Flemish-Dutch organization that develops and stimulates Dutch language policy in the Netherlands, Flanders and Suriname and supports the Dutch language in the world. The appointment was approved on 27 January during the Committee of Ministers of the organization.
Minister-president Jambon, and Minister of Culture, and Minister of Education Ben Weyts received their Dutch colleague Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Ingrid Van Engelshoven, in Brussels. The Committee of Ministers meets every six months to determine the policy of the Taalunie.
In addition to the appointment, a number of other topics were on the agenda, such as cooperation in the field of reading comprehension and reading promotion, good practices in the field of language acquisition by newcomers, and cooperation with the African Language Council.
The ministers also had a broader exploratory political dialogue on education and culture, followed by the Committee of Ministers of the Dutch-Flemish Accreditation Organization (NVAO), which is responsible for monitoring the quality of higher education.
Recently, the Taalunie launched a new website: www.taalunie.org
