Professor Qin Tianbao was Invited to the China-Belgium Urbanization Forum

On June 22, Professor Qin Tianbao, deputy dean of the School of Law, took part in the Urbanization Forum, which was held in Wuhan, as the only representative from university at the invitation of the Belgian Embassy in China. His Majesty Philip, Belgian King, and Mr. Wang Guosheng, governor of Hubei Province, participated and addressed the opening ceremony. 

“Urbanization” is the theme for this forum, which mainly focused on the relationship between urbanization and sustainable development. Representatives from China and Belgium addressed the forum separately. The title of Professor Qin Tianbao’s speech was the Environmental Law Issues Belgium Enterprises Should Pay Attention to When Coming to China. He said that the Chinese government attached great importance to environmental protection and ecological development. Great progress has been made in China’s environmental law under this background. In recent years, China’s environmental legislation is improving, environmental law enforcement is enhancing and environmental justice has been developed greatly. This new momentum has provided many opportunities for Belgium enterprises, such as financial support, tax break, rights and guarantees, access to environmental protection market and so on. But at the same time, they are confronted with greater risk of infringing the environmental law, because the new legal system, with the Law of Environmental Protection at its core, has specified wider scope of obligation, government is stricter in law enforcement, and the cost of breaking law is greater than before. Therefore, Belgium enterprises in China have to attach great importance to the development of environment-related laws. (Research Institute of Environmental Law)