The project was introduced during an informal meeting to all current 13 diamond organizations. It seems that the project is welcome. The former president of the BVGD, André Gumuchdjian, who’s been fighting for four years considers, “this draft meets all our requests. However, we’ve serious misgivings about the principle of a public company. Indeed, such a legal structure would imply that at any moment, the minister might be able to choose the administrators.”

This is not to mention the huge financial reserve of the HRD as it is now. It’s not clear as to if transforming the HRD into a public company, means that the Belgium is going to appropriate funds to HRD, in which case, the whole operation might resemble much a process of nationalization.

The draft of the new HRD by-laws, which have been under negotiations by a taskforce of lawyers (with the supervision of Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt) for a few weeks, was submitted to various groups of interests and institutions in Antwerp in order to take comments on February 16, 2006. “If we don’t manage to reach a decent compromise based on this draft as a starting point, the government will convert it all into a law, which we won’t be able to by-pass,” said One of the HRD board members.