Outgoing Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo is to receive his colleagues from the Netherlands and Luxembourg at the Egmont Palace in Brussels on Tuesday for the annual Benelux summit, his cabinet confirmed on Wednesday.
Their agenda includes an ambitious cross-border project, but also the return of certain border controls.
The first topic of discussion on the agenda of De Croo (Liberal), Dutch Minister-president Dick Schoof (Independent) and Luxembourg Prime Minister Luc Frieden (Christian Democrat) is likely to be Europe's migration policy.
The Schengen area of free internal movement will be discussed, with the Netherlands announcing that border controls will be reintroduced at the beginning of December to combat migrant smuggling. However, the three leaders will also look at the implementation of the European Pact on Migration and Asylum.
The Dutch government, which now includes the far right, is asking the EU to derogate from European asylum rules, return policies (expulsions) and the EU's partnerships with third countries. The international agenda will also include Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as the United States and the forthcoming Trump administration.
The Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany), Hendrik Wüst, will join the trio to discuss European competitiveness. There will also be discussions on the Einstein Telescope, the European gravitational wave detector project.
The Meuse-Rhine Euregion, which straddles the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, hopes to host this instrument for measuring the structure of space-time, which will generate socio-economic spin-offs.
