Born in The Hague, Houben was considered one of the best Maastricht mayors. He held that position during three periods in office from 1985 to 2002. The European Summit of 1991 was an absolute high point for Philip Houben.
Kees Boonman lives and breathes politics, according to his colleagues in The Hague, where he has been working for decades as a political reporter and commentator. Born in 1954 in the Dutch Province of Zeeland, he is an old hand at journalism. Former Prime Minister Wim Kok once said that he was ‘tenacious as a terrier’.
Watch the video report. Exactly twenty-five years after the Maastricht Treaty, the Limburg capital invited prominent Europeans to return to the birthplace of the modern European Union and the euro.
Luc Soete, leading economist and former rector of Maastricht University: “Financial crisis is a poison that has seeped into Europe.” Professor Luc Soete was born in 1950 in the Brussels borough of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek. He studied economics in Ghent and then worked at the University of Sussex in the south of England, where he obtained his…