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The Roman road that runs from Bavay in France to Cologne in Germany cuts through Wallonia, putting it from early times at the crossroads of European life. As a result, the region is in the very throbbing heart of Europe when it comes to commercial, industrial and financial activities, lying as it does between Paris, Luxembourg, Bonn, Amsterdam and London.

A few hours away from Liège, Mons, Namur and Charleroi, the European Union lies open to Wallon industries and those which have chosen to locate there. Wallonia is a land of exchanges: not only economic, but also cultural and human, and has been able to take advantage of its ideal geographical situation.

Wallonia has a vast modern communication network:

• motorways,
• railways,
• inland waterways,
• air routes.

Wallonia's motorway network is the densest and probably one of the best-equipped in the world. Paris, Cologne, Amsterdam and Frankfurt are all less than 300 km from Wallonia.
Since 1994, London has been within easy reach by car thanks to the opening of the Eurotunnel. The railway network is also very dense and connects Wallonia with major international cities thanks to the TGV, the Thalys, the Eurostar and, more recently, Ice the TGV line between Brussels and Frankfurt.

Wallonia has always had an exceptional inland waterways network thanks to the Meuse, Scheldt (Escaut) and Rhine rivers and their tributaries and the canal system.

Outstanding civil engineering structures allow boats weighing as much as 9,000 tons to travel as far as Liège along the Albert canal. Thanks to the sloping lock at Ronquières, the canal system stretches from Antwerp to Charleroi. Since September 2002, the Strépy-Thieu hydraulic lift, which is the largest ever built in the world, has allowed large boats to travel quickly between the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt (Escaut).

Paradoxically, Wallonia, a continental region, has in fact become a maritime region due to its proximity to a number of major ports such as Antwerp, Rotterdam, Dunkirk, Zeebruges and Gent.

Many air routes crisscross our region. All Wallonia's cities and industrial centres are less than an hour's drive from the Brussels-National airport. In addition, Wallonia has several regional air facilities: Liège Airport and Brussels-South-Charleroi Airport. Charleroi airport, which is located on a 200-hectare complex, can accommodate a million passengers and was created to take the pressure off the increasingly saturated Brussels-National