Belgium (a country with three official languages: French, Dutch and German) has a long tradition in bilingualism thanks to its two geographical and linguistic regions, Wallonia and Flanders. This also holds true for multilingualism (due to the phenomenon of migration many languages mix in Belgian school and society especially in the Brussels-Capital Region). In Belgium, since primary school children are exposed to various languages (the languages spoken in the family, studied in school and from the social environment) children spontaneously express themselves in several languages and they do it easily in most of the cases. Starting with primary school (6-12 years old), children get in contact with at least 3 languages (mother tongue, French and Dutch). They need to put their language knowledge into action and become accustomed to make correlations between them. The program of openness for cultures and foreign languages (Ouverture aux Langues et aux Cultures) developed in Belgium schools gives the opportunity to value the mother tongue of every student and the possibility to compare the languages of schooling, the ones learned at school and pupils' extra-curricular language resources. This program is based on Directive 77/486/CEE of June 25th, 1977 on the schooling of immigrant children for the purpose of integrating them in the school environment of the adoptive country. The program of openness for cultures and foreign languages (OLC) also foresees the implementation of bilateral agreements between adopting countries and countries of origin, the promotion of education in the mother tongue and of the culture from the country of origin. The OLC programme started in 1997 with partnerships between Belgium, Italy, Morocco, Turkey, Greece and Portugal; in 2008 Belgium entered into a partnership with Romania, in 2009 with Spain and in September 2011 with China. The partnerships with these states are based on a Chart, a document signed by the representatives of the WalloniaBrussels Federation and of the governments from the respective states. The French (15,2%), Romanians (9,3% - 38.514) and Moroccans (9%) were the main foreign communities present in Brussels according to the 2018 Mini-Bru survey published by the Institute of Statistics and Analysis in Brussels. The Brussels-Capital Region comprises 179 different nationalities out of which 414 139 in the city of Brussels were recorded as foreign nationals last year. According to the Brussels Institute for Statistics and Analysis, the presence of Romanians in the capital is relatively recent as compared to other groups of immigrants, Moroccans or Italians, for instance. In 2017, almost 40 000 Romanians were legally living in the capital. In 2014 the majority of Romanians in Brussels (36%) were aged 30-44, and their children were mostly enrolled in the Francophone schools of the capital so as to benefit from the OLC program thanks to the partnership between the Wallonie-Brussels Federation and the Govern of Romania. As compared to other states where it is put into practice (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Great Britain), in Belgium the OLC programme has its particularity, comprising two types of activities that may take place in the same school: a mother tongue course, on the one hand and a course of openness towards foreign languages and cultures, on the other hand. In the case of the partnership with Romania, the two courses are taught by the same teacher if he/ she has benefited from training in the field of intercultural pedagogy, apart from the compulsory training in language teaching, Romanian culture and civilisation. As teachers of Romanian language, culture, civilisation and intercultural openness, we use the OLC course as an entry gate to the teaching of Romanian as foreign language and means to attract Romanian pupils to their mother tongue course, an extracurricular and optional course not included in the school syllabus. Within OLC we approach the transfers and interferences between various languages and we compare grammatical metalanguage to draw attention to the similitudes and differences between languages. This allows pupils to become aware of the likely errors and thus avoid them, on the one hand and trust their language competencies, on the other hand. The openness to foreign languages does not equal the teaching of additional languages, but the development of plurilingual competencies so that pupils can communicate more self-confidently relying on their language knowledge, be it partial, and use them for other school disciplines. Most often, to teach notions of Romanian as foreign language, we use activities of linguistic contact. We stress lexis, comparing the days of the week in Latin languages ( we highlight the notion of linguistic family), we teach the position of the definite and indefinite articles in Romanian or how negation works in Romanian as compared to other languages of Latin descent.
