European Union officials were working frantically. Top brass from across the continent had flown to Washington to meet with President Trump about the future of the war in Ukraine, and officials were scrambling to relay news and to work on a plan for peace.
Emails zinged. Phones buzzed. Videoconferences overlapped.
But at the E.U. headquarters in Brussels last week, silence reigned.
A lone security guard leaned against the European Commission’s Berlaymont building and tapped his foot, visibly bored as he manned the visitor’s entrance. There were few journalists and other guests to screen. The wide sidewalks of Brussels’ government district, usually thronged with diplomats and politicians, were bathed in balmy sunshine and nearly empty.
“On a normal day, this building is full of people,” said Wopke Hoekstra, the European commissioner for climate and one of the few E.U. officials in the building last Tuesday.
Mr. Hoekstra was the E.U.’s “designated survivor” for the week. Diplomats and journalists in Brussels use the title as a tongue-in-cheek nod to the American practice of holding a potential presidential successor back from big events to ensure that the entire government cannot be taken down at once.
Similarly, Mr. Hoekstra was supposed to be in Brussels to ensure that someone from the E.U.’s executive arm was present if disaster should strike. Many of his colleagues had flocked to Lisbon, or the south of France, or quaint villages tucked high in the Alps, in keeping with the tradition of European August vacations.
But Mr. Hoekstra admitted that his temporary job was nowhere nearly as exciting as the title makes it sound.
“It is clearly underwhelming,” he said from his office, gesturing out at the drained city.
Wearing dark slacks and a pressed white shirt, Mr. Hoekstra was a fashion outlier in the ghost town surrounding the European Union buildings, where few passers-by dressed in the usual stiff attire of bureaucrats and think tankers. People walking between the government office towers wore sundresses, linen button downs, flowing trousers. One sported a pink T-shirt with the phrase “ocean air and salty hair.”
Lunch fast-casual spots were all but empty; many were not open at all. Impossible-to-reserve restaurant tables were easy to nab. The buzz of the subway and trams had been replaced by a subdued calm.
Even Brussels’ traffic jams had cleared, because the city sees a quarter less traffic in mid-August than in mid-July.
“Where did you all go?” Karl Mathiesen, a senior correspondent at Politico, wrote plaintively in the Aug. 7 rendition of Brussels Playbook, a closely read newsletter.
Mr. Mathiesen, originally from Australia, is a former Brussels correspondent who now lives in London, but he returned this month so that his children could practice their French in summer camp. He found himself in a quiet office, surrounded by a quiet government quarter. And he said everyone was missing out.
“The terraces are empty, you can sit wherever you want,” he said. “The traffic, which is usually terrible, has thinned out. The air is cleaner. It’s sad that people leave.”
But if Brussels’ regular denizens had decamped, tourists hadn’t. They packed the cobbled streets and kitschy chocolate shops of the old town, snapped photos in front of the marble spires of its gothic town hall, dug into moules frites near the Grand-Place and downed goblets of tawny beer at outdoor tables.
July is probably the busiest month of the year in the tourist area, said Youssef Kadouri, a waiter at Le Pêcheur, where shrimp croquettes, a local favorite, will set you back about 20 euros. But August is also buzzy. Most nights, every table is filled.
And even though many Brussels residents had left the city, work followed. .
Mr. Hoekstra, at the European Commission, said he was still talking to colleagues, joining meetings and carrying on the business of governance.
“Very few people can resist being near their phone,” he said.
Over the past two weeks, E.U. leaders have dialed into remote meeting after remote meeting. First they needed to talk with Mr. Trump before his meeting in Alaska with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Then they needed to plan for a White House meeting on Ukraine. Then they needed to debrief from that gathering. After that, they had to finalize a trade deal.
The flurry visibly disrupted sun-soaked vacations.
António Costa, the president of the European Council, which sets the E.U.’s political direction, joined calls from Lisbon and from an islet off the French Riviera, where President Emmanuel Macron hosted him for a call and news conference on Aug. 13.
“I thank you, President Macron, for welcoming me here today when I was on vacation in France,” a smiling Mr. Costa said, in French. He added that he had “to change my outfit to have this very important working meeting with President Trump.”
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times.
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