A Brussels politician is accusing Eurocrats of feigned outrage for not wanting to move to poorer quarters of the city blighted by drug abuse — quipping that many of the EU’s civil servants are themselves drug takers.
“A lot of people working for the European institutions take drugs,” Brussels’ State Secretary for Urbanism Pascal Smet said during a closed-door meeting with the European Commission’s Office for Infrastructure and Logistics in Brussels (OIB), which is responsible for housing EU staff.
At the meeting, held on January 23, they discussed the possible relocation of EU agencies from the EU Quarter to the Belgian capital’s low-income Northern Quarter, a stone’s throw from Brussels’ Gare du Nord train station and an area that city authorities are attempting to redevelop and gentrify after decades of neglect.
While there appears to be support for the move in the upper echelons of the institutions, the trade unions that represent EU staff are concerned over the relocation efforts, citing the high crime and drug abuse rates in the Northern Quarter.
Smet was quick to dismiss that argument, suggesting that EU workers’ own drug habits meant they were hardly fit to pass judgement on others.
The politician even suggested that cocaine is a popular drug among EU staffers, saying that “in Schuman, they are dealing drugs too … and probably not the same drugs they are dealing [in the Northern Quarter], but probably a little bit whiter.”
Smet’s comments did not go down well, and were denounced in a letter sent by staff unions representing the workers of the EU institutions to Budget and Administration Commissioner Johannes Hahn. In the letter, the Brussels region’s representative’s words were described as “intolerable.”
“I cannot understand what he was thinking when he made this comment or why the OIB staff allowed him to attack the dignity and reputation of the institutions’ staff,” said Cristiano Sebastiani, president of the Renouveau & Démocratie trade union and one of the letter’s signatories. “Mr. Smet has to withdraw this totally unacceptable statement.”
Smet told POLITICO that his comments had been made in jest, and were in response to a meeting attendee who implied European civil servants would not know how to deal with a community in which drug users might be present.
“All I said was that there were other places in which drug abusers are present, including Schuman Square,” he said. “We are one city … There aren’t neighborhoods that are for people from Brussels and others that are for Europeans.”
Smet conceded that crime was an issue in the Northern Quarter. In 2021, BNP Paribas Fortis had to hire security guards to escort its employees from Brussels Gare du Nord to their offices, and last fall several non-governmental organizations penned an open letter denouncing the steady rise in violence in the area.
But Smet said that while he empathized with Eurocrats worried about the potential move, by relocating to the area they could play a role in its regeneration.
“The people of the European Commission can be actors of change,” he said. “By coming here they will change the nature of the neighborhood.”
Decisions regarding the relocation of EU agencies to the Northern Quarter are up to the European Commission, which appears to look favorably upon the move as part of a larger strategy to occupy less office space in Brussels and spread its employees throughout the city, opting for a “greener” and “more convivial” relationship with the Belgian capital.
The institution intends to begin moving employees to a building it has rented in the area by the end of this year, and is weighing moving up to six agencies to the district in the longer term.
The institutions’ trade unions maintain the relocation scheme has not been transparent and are asking Commission officials to share information in order to ascertain if the move makes financial sense.