Belgium will be hosting a state visit from the President of Austria next week.
The announcement came in the afternoon of Monday, 14 March, from the Belgian Royal Palace via a press release.
“At the invitation of Their Majesty the King and Queen, His Excellency Alexander Van der Bellen, Federal President of the Republic of Austria, and Mrs Doris Schmidauer will carry on a State visit to Belgium,” reads the announcement.
The visit will take place from Monday, 21 to Wednesday, 23 March, in the traditional three-day format of a state visit. However, the Palace did not release any specific items on the agenda at this time, nor has it specified that they will ever be released for the public.
The short amount of time that passes between the announcement and the visit taking place gives hope that it will actually happen.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, and even more since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many royal engagements had to be cancelled all around Europe to make room for all the emergency meetings that such an invasion entails and to accommodate health safety restrictions in different countries, where the pandemic is concerned.
The latest state visit to be cancelled from the Belgian royal agenda is the state visit to the Republic of Congo that was supposed to happen from 7 to 10 March. Its cancelling was explained by the Ukrainian emergency, and it somewhat quieted down the many protests that had surrounded the announcement.
Congo is a former Belgian colony, and it is many people’s opinion that the occupying country has never properly dealt with its colonial past. Even a member of the Royal Family, Princess Esmeralda, has called upon the royals to apologise for the cruelty perpetrated by the colonisers.
Another recent cancellation of a state visit happened right across the border in the Netherlands, where King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima have “postponed indefinitely” a state visit to Greece in light of the recent developments of the Russian conflict in Ukraine. The visit had already been cancelled twice before because of the increase in the number of coronavirus cases.
This has been the case for so many visits, at many levels, for the past two years: announcements are made, and then they get annulled last minute because of health safety measures.
