Economist.com Cities Guide: Brussels Briefing - May 2006

News this month

Extremist killings

An 18-year-old schoolboy went on a murderous shooting spree on May 11th, plunging Belgium into another bout of introspection about racially motivated violence. Hans Van Themsche, a Belgian who had been expelled from his boarding school for smoking, took a train to the country’s second-biggest city, Antwerp, where he bought a gun and killed a 24-year-old pregnant woman from Mali and the two-year-old Flemish girl she was looking after. He also seriously wounded a 46-year-old Turkish woman. The carnage ended when he was shot and wounded by a policeman.

Mr Van Themsche’s intention, as told beforehand to a classmate, was to punish foreigners. His family has links to the extreme-right Vlaams Belang party, which political opponents accuse of encouraging racial hatred. Party officials complain that they are being made a scapegoat for the actions of a mad person. The shootings also prompted calls to tighten Belgium’s gun controls. The boy bought his weapon and bullets from a gun shop for €500 ($640), after filling out a registration form and producing an identity card. The federal parliament is considering plans to require gun buyers to have a special licence and to impose a delay between purchase and possession of a weapon.

Killer returns

Crime and racial tension were already at the centre of political debate in Brussels because of the stabbing and killing a month earlier of a 17-year-old schoolboy, Joe Van Holsbeeck, at the central station. Although initial reports suggested that his attackers were north African, they were later identified as Poles of Romany origin. His presumed attacker was arrested in Suwalki, eastern Poland, on April 27th and should be extradited to Belgium in May. His accomplice was arrested in Brussels. The incident has become such a hot political issue that the Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, discussed the case with his Polish counterpart, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, when they met on May 6th, and agreed to weekly updates on the legal progress. An estimated 80,000 people took part in a march through Brussels on May 21st to commemorate Van Holsbeeck.

Staying put

Mr Verhofstadt held talks with Belgium’s most senior Roman Catholic priest, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, the Archbishop of Brussels and Mechelen, on May 10th to discuss protests being staged in churches in Brussels and other cities by illegal immigrants. The protestors, who apparently enjoy the support of some priests, have occupied several churches; some have even gone on hunger-strike. The bishop of Antwerp, Paul Van den Berghe, has called for a more humane asylum policy, while the bishop of Namur, André Leonard, has allowed illegal immigrants to stay in his Episcopal palace.

Some of the immigrants are asylum-seekers who had their requests for asylum refused. Others have simply never registered with the Belgian authorities. They are demanding papers, such as residency permits and identity cards, to regularise their status, and are protesting against a government bill to tighten immigration procedures. The interior minister, Patrick Dewael, wants to ensure that the duration of an asylum procedure, including appeal, is less than a year. He aims to strip the slow-moving immigration service of its responsibility for launching investigations. Instead, a general commissioner for refugees and displaced persons would decide on applications, and a board for immigration disputes would weigh appeals.

Zaventem airport

BIAC, which operates the international airport at Zaventem, has announced plans to invest €600m in developing property adjoining the airport over the next 20 years. The operating company is 30% owned by the Belgian state and 70% owned by Macquarie, an Australian financial group. It will invest €400m in Airport Village, an office and conference complex, with work starting next year. Another €200m has been earmarked for developing the airport’s freight capacity, as it seeks new customers to compensate for the loss of DHL, a courier firm. DHL is moving its European hub from Brussels to Leipzig in 2008, a decision influenced by long-running uncertainty over night-flights over Brussels, owing to complaints from locals about late-night noise.

The Belgian transport minister, Renaat Landuyt, has submitted a new law for deciding the distribution of flight paths, which should be approved in June. Meanwhile, five people were hurt and four planes destroyed by a fire in a hangar at the airport on May 5th.

Growing pains

European Union leaders will gather in Brussels on June 15th and 16th to discuss membership applications and the appetite for further enlargement. The European Commission reported on May 16th that Romania and Bulgaria were ready to join the union in January 2007 as expected. But the 25 EU states still left themselves the chance to delay membership by a year—a decision they will take after an October assessment. The other membership issue up for discussion in June is Europe’s single currency, the euro. Slovenia is on course to become the first of the ten states that joined the EU in May 2004 to advance to the euro zone, with effect from January. Lithuania will have its application turned down because its inflation rate is judged to be too high, by the narrowest of margins.

Of more relevance to visitors are the security arrangements for the summit, which will cause traffic disruption. Other possible sources of mid-summer congestion include May 27th's Gay Pride event, which attracted 25,000 people last year, and another 25,000 people will take part in a 20km road-race the following day. Ascension Day, May 25th, is a public holiday in Belgium, as is June 5th, Whit Monday.

Catch if you can

May 2006

Rops and Munch: Precursors, rebels and recluses

Until June 22nd 2006

This moody exhibition at the Musée Charlier compares Edvard Munch, a Norwegian artist best known for painting “The Scream”, with Félicien Rops, a Belgian renowned for his illustrations. The display of about 100 lithographs and etchings is particularly concerned with their depictions of and dark attitudes toward women.

The Musée Charlier, which stands on the city’s inner ring-road between Place Madou and Arts-Loi, is a modest museum, largely devoted to Belgian work of the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

Musée Charlier, Avenue des Arts 16. Tel: +32 (0)2 218 53 82. Open: Tues-Sun, noon-5pm. See the website.

More from the Brussels cultural calendar