BRUSSELS ― A string of fatal drug-related shootings in the heart of the city that houses the EU’s institutions brought home just how far Brussels has fallen: bankrupt, plagued by violence and crime, and politically wrecked.
In the first month and a half of the year alone, 11 shootings claimed the lives of two people and injured another four. They haven’t stopped. Unthinkable just a few years ago, the attacks betray a city in sharp decline and reveal the desperate need for some strong political leadership.
But Brussels doesn’t have any.
Belgium’s labyrinthine political structure contains a multilayered system of government, each with its own powers and often beset by infighting. When they work things are fine, when they don’t there’s paralysis. And they don’t get much more paralyzed than in the Brussels region where, nine months after the election, politicians are still arguing with no government in sight.
It’s not just the coordination of Brussels’ crime-fighting that has been exposed by the political mess. The construction of social housing and major infrastructure projects risk being delayed. Subsidies — such as for charities, NGOs and cultural projects — are frozen. Funding for social welfare centers, police and local authority work is shrouded in uncertainty. Public debt is piling up almost as quickly as the garbage sacks on the dirty streets.
“It really is the survival of Brussels, as a city, that’s at stake,” said Christophe De Beukelaer, a centrist MP.
The scandal of €4 million a day
Away from the tourist-thronged neo-gothic Grand-Place, the cute chocolate shops and flamboyant beer halls, this is a city on the brink.
If the city had a government, getting Brussels’ spending under control would be its number one challenge.
The capital’s debt stands at over €14 billion, without counting the €1.6 billion it’s projected to add to that this year. Belgian newspaper Bruzz calculated that the deficit ― the difference between how much it spends and brings in ― is increasing by €4 million every day.
De Beukelaer, who attempted to reboot coalition negotiations last month, is scathing. In all the months since the election, politicians haven’t even come around to talking substance, he told POLITICO.
“It’s just political posturing that’s blocking Brussels,” he said. “‘You’re my friend. You’re not. I want to work with you. But not with you.’ It’s immature.”
A capital liability
The overly complicated political architecture confuses and frustrates even Belgians themselves.
Put (relatively) simply, Brussels is one of Belgium’s three regions, together with French-speaking Wallonia in the south and Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north, by which the city is surrounded. All three regions have their own governments with responsibilities for matters like housing, transport and economic policy.
With Belgium grappling to meet EU-mandated spending cuts, Brussels’ debt is a “liability for the whole country,” said Dave Sinardet, professor of political sciences at the Free University of Brussels.
Things could get worse. The region’s credit rating could be downgraded by the summer, which would make it more expensive to borrow, further adding to the region’s debt, caretaker Budget Minister Sven Gatz has warned.
Sinardet said that could at least create some pressure to finally form a government. Others are less optimistic.
The centrist Les Engagés party has proposed to slash Brussels politicians’ pay by 30 percent until they form a government, and to cut it by 40 percent if there still isn’t one in place by June.
French vs. Dutch = stalemate
For now, even the latest negotiating avenue, a minority government, looks doubtful, given that even then it would need the approval of a parliamentary majority to get to work, and for every single decision it takes after that.
While it wouldn’t be the ideal setup to address Brussels’ challenges, “a minority government would still be better equipped than no government,” De Beukelaer said.
Here’s how we’ve ended up here: While Dutch speakers outnumber French-speaking Walloons in the country as a whole, the reverse is true in Brussels. So to guarantee Dutch-speaking representation, the Brussels government has to comprise a majority from both language groups. On both sides, a set of parties have to agree to work with each other before they cut a full-blown coalition deal.
After the June election, an agreement on the French-speaking side was relatively straightforward. The center-right MR became Brussels’ largest French-speaking party, and it quickly cut a deal with the Socialist Party and Les Engagés.
On the other side of the linguistic divide, the Flemish Greens won the Dutch-speaking vote, and in November clinched an accord with the socialist Vooruit, the liberal Open VLD and the Flemish-nationalist N-VA, the party of Belgium’s new Prime Minister Bart De Wever.
You’ll have guessed by now that victory cries were short-lived. The French-speaking socialists refused to govern with the Flemish nationalists. The liberals of the open VLD in turn refused to govern without the Flemish nationalists.
The French-speakers are “kidding themselves” if they think they can fix Brussels’ problems without collaborating with the Flemish nationalists who head the federal government, Open VLD’s chief negotiator, Frédéric De Gucht, said.
Ahmed Laaouej, the Brussels president of the Socialist Party, didn’t respond to an interview request. In an Instagram video posted last week, he called the Flemish nationalists a “separatist, anti-Brussels and anti-diversity party” and said that if it was involved in a Brussels government it would show “contempt for the Brussels region and its interests.”
No one is budging.
Pressing the nuclear button
While Belgium is split into three regions, Brussels itself is divided into 19 municipalities. Each has their own mayor. They manage the region’s six police forces.
As crime and violence soars, Belgium’s federal government has said it wants to merge these into a single entity. Unsurprisingly, Brussels politicians have lambasted the decision.
They argue the police’s real problem is not the elaborate organization but a lack of national funding, and that a merger risks alienating the police from Brussels’ citizens.
And as an example of the bitter language-divide recrimination, some, such as Défi’s François De Smet, blame the new national government for imposing a Flemish-nationalist pet project against Brussels’ will.
Flemish parties say it just makes sense. Like with a decision to send all police calls through a joint dispatching system, “you don’t have to be a Flemish nationalist to know that’s a better system,” Open VLD’s De Gucht said.
In the stalemate, some fear Brussels’ self-determination is slipping away.
The president of the MR party, Georges-Louis Bouchez, has indeed raised the threat that Brussels, if it doesn’t get its act together, could be placed under federal government control.
That would be akin to pressing the nuclear button. It’s also probably impossible.
Legally speaking, the idea is “fiction,” according to Sinardet. But in theory, the federal government could make additional payments to Brussels conditional on certain measures, similar to how the EU made Greece reform in return for a bailout, he said.
As recently as the early hours of Friday morning there was another shooting in the south-west of the city.
Sooner or later, Brussels’ chaos will force someone to act. But seemingly not yet.
“I’m embarrassed by the political circus,” De Beukelaer said.
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