The French government has continuously conducted technical cooperation with Thai government in the field of scholarship namely scholarship for Master Degree, Ph.D., short-term training course, and scholarship for training course as requested by Ministries since 1975. Office of the Cooperation for International Development and Embassy of France to Thailand annually convened in order to examine requests from each agency. The Thai government sent Bachelor degree students under One District One Scholarship to further their study in France. In this regard, the French government considered granting one special scholarship per year for Thai students. In 2012, Ministry of Education in collaboration with the French government established governmental agreement on technical and research cooperation in order to replace governmental agreement on higher education and research cooperation (1999-2009). The present agreement emphasizes on cooperation on education in every level, and cooperation in various fields such as high-level negotiation, educational and research personnel exchange, junior researcher exchange, technical training course, seminar, and French training course in Thailand.

In this opportunity, the Prime Minister signed the technical cooperation under intergovernmental agreement framework on technical and research cooperation signed during her visit. In so doing, she supported One District One Scholarship program both in the fields of French training course, and scholarship for current grantees and prospective grantees. Moreover, the Prime Minister expressed Thailand’s interest in cooperating with the French government on vocational education development.

At 16.00 (local time), the Prime Minister and the delegation kindly proceeded to Pavillon d’

Arsenal in order to visit “Paris, Metropolic 2020” exhibition. She and her delegation were welcomed by Paris mayor. The “Paris, Metropolic 2020” exhibition illustrates city planning, Paris dwellers’ quality of lives development from the past to the present, and information about Paris in every dimension through 2D and 3D technological system which is up-to-date, and comprehensive. The exhibition shows that Paris has been well managed since 1853. Therefore, it has been utilized in the most beneficial way. Paris also is considered a good city-planning metropolis with one of the most outstanding architecture and buildings in the world.

In this opportunity, the Prime Minister expressed her interest in Paris city planning, modern building construction which aims at its usefulness and preserves Paris unique architecture, people’s quality of lives development, especially inequality and poverty elimination by means of an effective and approachable transportation system. The Prime Minister viewed that both Paris and Bangkok are homed to a number of populations. Both cities are unique with economic and social diversity; therefore, it is possible to adapt Paris-styled city planning and people’s quality of lives development to Bangkok systems.