WAFFLES, chocolate, and beer. These are probably the first things that come to mind when someone mentions Belgium.

But how about international treaty scrutiny?

I have previously mentioned that I am a member of the Public Affairs and Accounts Committee in Westminster, and last week I was part of a delegation from that committee who went to Brussels for a factfinding mission.

We went to the Belgian capital as part of our inquiry on international agreements.

I appreciate that this might not sound the most interesting of topics (and I may have already lost a few readers at this point) but it is actually a fundamentally important part of our politics and our national identities, and it certainly affects our everyday lives. 

Indeed, the biggest political decision of a generation – the decision to leave the European Union – was essentially an issue of international agreements.

When we were a member of the EU, it was they who instigated and concluded international agreements on our behalf – though we had some limited degree of Parliamentary scrutiny in place when this happened.

Now we have left the EU, international agreements are the mandate of the British Government alone – and there remains a question as to just how much of an input Parliament as a whole should have on these decisions.

So why did we go to Belgium?

Belgium is an interesting case study to look at because of the way the country is set up. We met with Belgian politicians and officials and learned that the country is comprised of highly autonomous regions and communities, all of which have equal powers alongside the federal government.

This means that treaties concluded by the EU have to be signed off not just by the Belgian federal government, but the parliaments in the regions and communities also.

This in fact led to an impasse during the EU-Canada trade agreement when the Parliament of Wallonia in Belgium refused to ratify the agreement.

Eventually, an addendum was added that satisfied the Walloon Parliament and the treaty could be ratified.

Did this demonstrate that the Belgians have suitable scrutiny when it comes to international agreements? Or could it be argued that this was too much scrutiny, making EU-scale negotiations impractical?

These are just the kind of questions that our committee was looking at.

But even more importantly, these are the sort of questions that our country is going to have to answer as we start to create precedents as to how any new treaties are put together and agreed upon.

A fundamental reason for our leaving the European Union was to allow our country to conduct our own trade deals and arrangements.

But we now have to work out just how it is we want to do that – and Belgium certainly proved an interesting case study to give us some ideas.