On Thursday 4 December, De Standaard will, for the first time, appear not only in Dutch. Exactly 107 years after the newspaper’s very first publication, De Standaard is launching a French-language edition: “De Standaard en français.” Every morning, a team of bilingual journalists selects the most relevant articles from the daily newspaper and compiles them into an innovative digital publication, available at standaard.be/fr.
Readers who register with their email address will receive the edition each morning in their digital mailbox. The first three months are free, giving French-speaking readers the opportunity to get to know De Standaard en français better.
Karel Verhoeven, Editor-in-Chief of De Standaard:
“We are now bringing De Standaard to French-speaking readers in Brussels and Wallonia because we believe it is journalistically relevant to be accessible to all Belgians. That relevance stems from the way the world has changed. The biggest challenges have long come from outside Belgium. Look at the debates on defence spending, Euroclear, trade barriers, or positions on Gaza and Israel. These issues are decided at the European level and especially at the federal level, where the heated discussions also take place on the budget and on reforms to pensions or unemployment benefits, social security, justice, and migration. In those debates, there are no clear dividing lines between Flemish and French-speaking interests. The journalism De Standaard provides on these topics is therefore not only pertinent for Flemish readers. We see it as a growing democratic deficit that, in such a pressing national and international context, no national media are available. We want to take responsibility for addressing that.”
