The Brussels Times Magazine - Winter 2024/2025

M A G A Z I N E No 57

The Louise Tower rises again

Winter 2024/2025

I’m Leuven it: The city’s universities are 600 years old.

Sort of Why Belgium’s new sex worker law has yet to change life on the street

Whatever happened to Belgium’s cars?

Once a motoring trailblazer, Belgium’s carmaking prowess is fading.

How did it happen – and who’s left?

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From the editor It may sound unlikely, but Belgium was once a carmaking trailblazer. In the early 20th century, Belgian car brands like Minerva and Imperia were elegant and exquisitely engineered. They were innovative too: Miesse pioneered steam motors and Delecroix developed the reverse gear. And they were fast: in 1899, Belgian engineer Camille Jenatzy’s Jamais Contente was the first car to exceed 100 km per hour.

Even when Belgian brands faded after the Second World War, the country’s reputation for manufacturing meant it was a top choice for factories churning out cars for others.

In the late 1990s, Belgium produced 1.2 million vehicles annually, making it the world leader in per capita production.

Those days seem long gone now. Car plants have closed one after the other: Renault Vilvoorde (1997), both Opel factories in Antwerp (1988 and 2010), and Ford Genk (2014).

This year, Audi announced it would leave its massive car factory in Brussels, and Mechelen bus maker Van Hool filed for bankruptcy.

In this issue, we look at Belgian carmaking from its pioneering origins to its success stories and its setbacks. James Morrison, author of ‘Twenty Cars that Defined the 20th Century’, starts it off by charting the Belgian tinkerers, inventors and entrepreneurs who helped make the country a byword for carmaking.

Dennis Abbott looks at the failure of Audi’s venture in Brussels, with its state-ofthe-art plant producing high-end electric vehicles that the market was not ready for.

Helen Lyons writes about Van Hool, which still makes top-of-the-range buses for all occasions but faces an uncertain future under new ownership.

The harsh new automotive era is not just a challenge for Belgium. Carmaking is still a totemic industry for Europe, for both its economic importance and for its symbolic value. Yet it is being buffeted by unprecedented forces. The green transition is supposed to herald a new emissions-free era, but Europe has been slow to roll out affordable models - while China has gained a vital foothold in the market.

Belgium’s once flourishing industry has shrunk. But it has not expired. Volvo’s plant in Ghent is rolling out a new generation of electric vehicles, as Lisa Bradshaw reports, while Volvo Trucks, also in Ghent, is cranking out units at a prodigious pace.

And D’Ieteren, which has long been a major car importer and distributor, has expanded to become a €10 billion business, as Ellen O’Regan writes.

Elsewhere in our issue, Ciara Carolan accompanies a special police unit as it does its rounds in Brussels checking on homeless people – and treating them with sympathy and support. Also out on the street, for very different reasons, are sex workers. Their precarious situation should have improved when Belgium decriminalised prostitution in 2022, but as Marie-Flore Pirmez reports, change has been slow.

We have three features on august Brussels venues that are due to reopen soon.

Frédéric Moreau writes about the Louise Tower, one of the first skyscrapers in the city, a sleek, modernist, 1960s monument that has been stripped and remade for the 21st century. Angela Dansby visits the Grand Hotel Astoria, a glamourous Belle Époque icon that is reopening after a deep clean. And Sabine Zednik-Hammonds reports from Galerie Bortier, a hidden gem for book lovers for 175 years but undergoing a controversial transformation into a gastronomic hub.

Leuven is Belgium’s oldest university, established in 1425, and is due to celebrate its 600th birthday next year, but as Philippe Van Parijs says, it has a complicated history.

Pope Francis, who visited Leuven for the anniversary in September, also called on the Bollandists, the barely known religious group behind the world’s most authoritative collection of works on saints, as Rory Watson writes.

Angela Dansby takes a weekend break to Bastogne, the Ardennes town widely known as the epicentre of the Battle of the Bulge, as it prepares for the 80th anniversary of the brutal clash. Richard Harris reports on Belgium’s unexpectedly thriving circus culture, which ranges from big top shows to mesmerising avant-garde performances.

And our senior tram correspondent Hugh Dow joins King Philippe on the new tram 10 as it sets off on its maiden voyage through the northern neighbourhood of Neder-Over-Heembeek.

Breandán Kearney meets brewer Claire Dilewyns in Dendermonde and uncovers the story of a hidden winter beer; Hughes Belin tries out chillis, sake, the Goods café and store, and the spectacular Entropy vegetarian restaurant; and Isabella Vivian highlights current and upcoming events worth checking out.

As part of our partnership with the Writers Festival of Belgium, we are publishing the winning entry from their 2024 short story competition, by Elisabetta Giromini, on a childhood weekend in the countryside that takes a dark turn.

And finally, while there may be threats to Belgian carmaking, Geoff Meade ponders more pedestrian perils as he crosses the street.

Leo Cendrowicz

Editor, The Brussels Times Magazine

The Brussels Times M A G A Z I N E No 57 Winter 2024/2025 The Brussels Times Avenue Louise 54 1050 Brussels +32 (0)2 893 00 67 info@brusselstimes.com ISSN Number: 0772-1633 On the Cover Illustration by Lectrr Editor Leo Cendrowicz Publishers Jonadav Apelblat Omry Apelblat Graphic Designer Marija Hajster Sales Operations Managers Caroline Dierckx Gidon Tannenbaum David Young Contributors Dennis Abbott, Hughes Belin, Lisa Bradshaw, Ciara Carolan, Angela Dansby, Hugh Dow, Richard Harris, Breandán Kearney, Lectrr, Helen Lyons, Geoff Meade, James Morrison, Frédéric Moreau, MarieFlore Pirmez, Ellen O’Regan,, Philippe Van Parijs, Isabella Vivian, Rory Watson Photo Credits

Lectrr: Cover, 144, Belga: 8-11, 22-27, 32, 36-38, 48, 60, 66, 72, 74, 78, 92, 100, 102, 103, 106, 112-116, 145, 146 Lysiane De Galan - Rétine et Capteur: 12-13 Lisa Bradshaw: 39 Ellen O’Regan: 44, 46 Leo Cendrowicz: 46, 76-77 STIB-MIBV: 78 123RF: 56, 60, 70 UNAIDS/Miguel Soll: 58 Frédéric Pauwels: 58 Ciara Carolan: 64 Arnaud Siquet: 120-121 Angela Dansby: 122-126 Ashley Joanna: 128-129

Advertising Please contact us on advertise@brusselstimes. com or +32 (0)2 893 00 67 for information about advertising opportunities.

Find your flow.

The sunlight starts its first dance across the water.

Time to reawaken your senses.

Waves of tranquillity wash over you, as yesterday floats away.

Join the club with feeling.

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F I T N E S S • F A M I LY • T E N N I S • W E L L N E S S • P O O L

Inside

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88

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When the Belgian motor industry led the world James Morrison

108 The whole sky in the

26

Over and Audi Dennis Abbott

110

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The Volvo village where cars marry, robots hum and efficiency reigns Lisa Bradshaw

The hidden keepers of saintly histories Rory Watson

114

Tram 10, from the Military Hospital to Churchill Hugh Dow

countryside is bigger Elisabetta Giromini

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42

How D’Ieteren created a €10 billion Belgian empire Ellen O’Regan

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The Louise Tower rises again Frédéric Moreau

122

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The rise, fall and future of Van Hool, Belgium’s busing pioneer Helen Lyons

90

Battlefields and beyond in Bastogne Angela Dansby

The grand plan to revive the golden age of the luxury hotel Angela Dansby

132

Dark horse Breandán Kearney

134

Why Belgium’s new sex worker law has yet to change life on the street Marie-Flore Pirmez

94

From books to butchers: The battle for Galerie Bortier's future Sabine Zednik-Hammonds

Food and drink Hughes Belin

138

Arts and events Isabella Vivian

58

The police unit helping the homeless Ciara Carolan

100 Mu.ZEE makeover aims to

144

Breaking pavement news Geoff Meade

66

What six centuries of higher education say about Belgium Philippe Van Parijs

102

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redefine Ostend art hub Lisa Bradshaw Big tops and beyond: Belgium’s thriving circus culture Richard Harris

Mass missteps Pope Francis arrives for a holy mass at the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels on September 29 at the end of his four-day visit to Belgium, mainly to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the KU Leuven and UCLouvain universities.

However, the trip was overshadowed by his dismissive comments on women, calling them "fertile hosts, carers and vital devotees”, and on abortion, calling Belgium’s legislation a ‘murderous law’ and doctors who perform abortions ‘contract killers’. He also failed to address King Philippe and Prime Minister Alexander De Croo’s calls to take more concrete actions to help survivors of abuse by the Catholic church.

Match ablaze Sporting Charleroi football fans pictured waving flares during a match against Standard de Liege. Flares are now a regular sight on the stands and are easily bought online. However, their increasing use is raising concerns amongst officials, who have underlined that it is against the law to enter a football ground carrying fireworks, flares, smoke bombs or any sort of pyrotechnics.

Celestial screensaver A solar storm created this dramatic Aurora Borealis – or Northern Lights - in the sky over Sivry-Rance in Hainaut.

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When the Belgian motor industry led the world Who knew that Belgians were carmaking trailblazers, whose ingenious innovations helped spark the €3 trillion industry that drives the world? For more than a century, a clutch of Belgians set the pace for luxury, sophisticated engineering and new technologies to help provide transport to the masses. As carmaking reinvents itself in the electric vehicle age, James Morrison, author of ‘Twenty Cars that Defined the 20th Century’, charts the Belgian success stories THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 17

Y Jenatzy was more than just a thrillseeking speed addict. He was also a shrewd businessman who understood that the publicity he gained from breaking the land speed record would give his firm a competitive advantage over their bitter rival, the French coachbuilder Jeantaud, in the rapidly growing Parisian electric carriage market.

es, I did write the headline for this article and no, it isn’t the first of April.

It is a fact that Belgium was one of the early pioneers not only of the automotive industry but also of the electric car industry long before net zero had become the imperative that it is today. Add on top of this the fact that a Belgian-designed and manufactured electric vehicle – the Jamais Contente – set the land speed record in 1899 at Yvelines near Paris, recording a top speed of a giddy 105.882 km per hour, and there is a story worth telling. At the turn of the last century Belgium with its powerful industrial base and great wealth was the epicentre of automotive innovation.

So, who were these motoring pioneers, what were the lost Belgian marques and manufacturers and what happened?

It’s a historical lesson in start-ups never quite fully reaching sustainable scale up, of Belgian ingenuity being either too far ahead of its time – the equivalent of Betamax losing out to VHS – or swept away by the competition from its larger neighbours. It is nevertheless a proud track record of entrepreneurship and innovation.

The story began in the 1880s, after German Carl Benz developed the first practical automobile and the concept was quickly copied by engineers around Europe. Belgians were quick to spot the potential of these horseless carriages. As a rich country, there was a market for the fantastically expensive, coachbuilt creations that began to grace the former stable blocks of the well-connected and the well-to-do.

The Jamais Contente was the creation of Belgian engineer Camille Jenatzy nicknamed Le Diable Rouge for his fiery ginger beard and love of speed. But Jenatzy was more than just a thrill-seeking speed addict. He was also a shrewd businessman who understood that the publicity he gained from breaking the land speed record would give his firm a competitive advantage over their bitter rival, the French coachbuild-

er Jeantaud, in the rapidly growing Parisian electric carriage market.

The fact that the fastest car in the world was an electric vehicle may come as something of a surprise to many, but the internal combustion engine had yet to establish its dominance. The jury was still out in a threehorse race (with no actual horses obviously...) between steam, electricity, and petrol. Like many other developments at the time – tiller steering versus steering wheels; the Levassor principle, where the engine is in front of the driver, versus rear engine – this was an age of experimentation. In terms of propulsion, on the streets of Paris and Brussels, electricity was in pole position.

Even at this early stage some of the current limitations of electric vehicles were present.

While range was not an issue for a car built solely to go as fast as possible in a straight line, weight was.

The Jamais Contente sought to offset the huge weight of the lead-acid accumulator batteries needed to power it by having revolutionary partinium alloy bodywork made from a mixture of magnesium, aluminium and tungsten – another innovation that would take many years to re-emerge having lost the car bodywork battle to steel. Aerodynamic, low coefficient of drag coachwork – albeit severely compromised by the ridiculously high driving position and the fact that the streamlined torpedo bodywork sat on an old-fashioned cart-sprung chassis – was an innovation that would take a further 30 years to become mainstream.

Unlike today’s electric vehicles, Jenatzy’s creation did not benefit from frictionless direct drive, but instead its twin Postel-Vinay 25kW electric motors were channelled to the rear wheels by an energy-sapping cog and chain drive. This, coupled with the tiller steering and unyielding suspension (despite the Michelin tyres) must have made the 68hp vehicle quite a handful and 100 km/h feel something like the equivalent of Mach 1. Indeed, when interviewed afterwards, Jenatzy

Above left: Poster for Jenatzy tyres. Above right: The Miesse steam car. Previous pages: Camille Jenatzy (wearing cap) in the Jamais Contente

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Poster for Fabrique Nationale motorbikes

said of the experience that it the car felt like a "projectile ricocheting along the ground.”

While it may have won races, it certainly wouldn’t have won any prizes for driver comfort.

Steam, cigarette lighters and reverse gears Not all early Belgian manufacturers opted for electric propulsion. Miesse, a Brussels manufacturer based in Rue des Goujons in Anderlecht, favoured the tried and tested technology of steam. Founded by Jules Miesse in 1874, Miesse’s early cars were powered by three-cylinder steam engines from 1896 until 1900. The chassis were made of reinforced ash hardwood and the boiler located under the bonnet.

The first Miesse petrol engine car appeared in 1900 and by 1904 the company had branched out into the motorised taxi market offering either a four-cylinder 2.0 litre or an eight-cylinder engine – the latter being an elongated version of the former. The firm also produced trucks to be exported to the Congo Free State. Miesse’s son took over the business in 1927 and decided to specialise in trucks and buses discontinuing car production. By 1929 Miesse had bought the Bollinckx works, allowing for an increase in its Junkers diesel-powered truck production to 100 per year. The firm survived for a century with the last vehicle – a bus – leaving the production line on July 12, 1974.

The list of early Belgian manufacturers is impressive but largely unfamiliar today – there were by some estimates more than 200 – a familiar picture across the industry glob-

ally at the time as former bicycle and armaments manufacturers sought to diversify into the newly emerging market.

As was the case in Britain, mergers and acquisitions had radically pruned the number within a decade. Production was not concentrated in Brussels either but distributed across the country with one of the longer surviving marques, Minerva, based in Antwerp, and Imperia and Nagant in Liège.

Belgian manufacturers were not only pioneers in the field of electric propulsion but also the first with inventions like the electric cigarette lighter and the hybrid engine (Adrien Piedboeuf’s Imperia), and reverse gear (Delecroix). The Imperia factory at Nessonvaux, built in 1907 in the style of a medieval castle, even featured a one km rooftop test track years before the famous Lingotto Fiat factory in Turin or the Chrysler factory in Buenos Aires. Unlike Lingotto, Nessonvaux was not purpose-built but was a former armaments factory: the rooftop test track was added later following complaints from local residents about the factory’s tendency to road test their vehicles by driving around the town’s narrow streets at high speed.

The key early Belgian manufacturers were: • Bovy, who produced trucks and light cars until the 1950s, • FN, originally a weapons manufacturer (like the UK’s BSA), produced passenger cars until 1930, • Excelsior, who lasted a similar length of time and produced sports and racing cars, • Imperia, set up in 1904, who built sports and passenger cars until 1948, • Nagant, another weapons manufacturer turned car manufacturer Metallurgique, focussed on the high-performance market segment until 1928, • Minerva, the ‘Belgian Rolls Royce’ and one of the longest surviving of the original Belgian pioneers,

Belgian manufacturers were not only pioneers in the field of electric propulsion but also the first with inventions like the electric cigarette lighter and the hybrid engine (Adrien Piedboeuf’s Imperia), and reverse gear (Delecroix). The Imperia factory at Nessonvaux, built in 1907 in the style of a medieval castle, even featured a one km rooftop test track years.

King Haakon of Norway’s 1913 Minerva

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 19

• Vivinus, who sold German cars with Belgian coachwork, • Delecroix, who pioneered the reverse gear, • Pipe, a successful early race car manufacturer whose products competed in the Paris-Berlin races of the period.

Indeed, before the outbreak of World War II, Belgium had approximately 100 car manufacturers and a thriving export industry. At Autoworld, the car museum in the Cinquantenaire Park, a section dedicated to Belgium's automobile heritage displays 20 emblematic vehicles, including the Minerva, FN, Imperia, Belga Rice and Excelsior – and celebrates the inventors, industrialists, engineers, designers and even race car drivers that built Belgium’s car reputation.

Post Wall Street Crash however, US protectionism spelled the beginning of the end of a sector that produced vastly more vehicles than its domestic market could ever consume.

Consolidation was inevitable with Imperia taking over Metallurgique in 1927, Excelsior in 1929 and Nagant in 1931 before merging briefly with Minerva in 1934 only to get divorced five years later in 1939. Post-war, firms like Bovy the truck manufacturer and Brossel Freres the bus and coach builders found themselves merging before being taken over by the UK’s Leyland group.

Imperia eventually assembled Standard Vanguards in the late 1940s and 50s at its Nessonvaux factory until Standard Triumph built a new factory at Malines in Mechelen which opened in 1960 effectively putting Imperia out of business. The Malines Leyland Triumph factory was renowned for the quality of assembly (the full range from Heralds to TR4 sportscars being built there) with engines bench tested before being fitted and a legendarily good paint shop.

The British Motor Corporation meanwhile bought the factory at Seneffe in 1965 in Hainaut which had been built two years earlier by the Belgian MG main distributor. This became the main hub for British Leyland’s European operations employing 30,000 workers and running assembly lines producing over 3,000 Austin Minis, Allegros and Morris Marinas a day at its height in the mid-1970s. As Leyland Triumph was forced by the British government to merge with the insolvent British Motor Corporation in 1968, two factories were no longer required, and the smaller Malines plant eventually closed in 1975. The parlous state of the UK British Leyland, parent company led, in turn, to Seneffe’s closure in 1980.

Luxury to workhorse Top: Minerva armoured car. Below: Minerva poster and advert

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Minerva’s story is an interesting one. As with Rover in the UK, Minerva’s origins lay in the manufacture of safety bicycles and sub-

sequently motorbikes – a promising coincidence as the two companies were to go into partnership in the early 1950s when Minerva won the contract from the Belgian army to build a version of the British Land Rover under licence.

This utilitarian, noisy and uncomfortable workhorse was a far cry from Minerva’s pre-war products which were very much at the luxury end of the market and were the transport of choice not only for the Belgian royal family but also for Hollywood stars and American industrialists.

Minerva’s first foray into internal combustion power had taken the form of motorised bicycles known as motorcyclettes: a small engine bolted onto the frame of a standard bicycle providing power to the wheels by a system of belts and pulleys. These ingenious motorbikes were the equivalent of today’s e-bikes: a relatively cheap and amazingly economical form of mass transportation. They were hugely popular far beyond Belgium’s borders – indeed the first British Triumph motorcycle was powered by a Minerva engine.

However, it was in luxury car production that Minerva excelled. Such was the quality of Minerva’s earliest offerings that before joining forces with Henry Royce in 1904, Charles Rolls was a luxury car dealer in London selling Minerva cars. The breakthrough for Minerva came when it secured the worldwide licence to produce American Charles Yale Knight’s ‘Knight’ engine. This, thanks to extra sleeving on its overhead valves, was virtually silent as well as both smooth and powerful. Engine sizes grew from straight six to straight eight cylinders and in the interwar period Minerva was a serious rival to Rolls-Royce with growing sales in the US and across Europe. This was all before the Wall Street Crash which forced its short-lived merger with Imperia.

Post-war, the Minerva Land Rover – a locally bodied (in steel rather than the UK equivalent’s Birm-a-Bright aluminium) was built under licence from Land Rover. Distinguishable to the trained eye by the sloping front wings (unlike the slab-fronted UK version) and different grille, Minerva Land Rovers not only mobilised the Belgian armed forces but also the Rijswacht. All was well until a breach of contract court case between Solihull and Antwerp – which Minerva won – soured the relationship and Land Rover decided to revoke the production licence.

Minerva’s demise soon followed in 1956 and with it seemingly the end of the Belgian pioneers. Seemingly, because even after the first pioneering wave, the Belgian motor industry continued to innovate. APAL produced sportscars using fibre-reinforced plastic (APAL standing for Application Polyester Armé de Liege) from 1961 until as recently as 1998.

Assembling for others The move away from the domestic pioneers towards Belgian assembly plants for foreign-owned manufacturers began in the interwar years with General Motors (Chevrolet and Cadillac) at Antwerp; Ford initially at Antwerp in the 1930s then subsequently at Genk; and Renault at Vilvoorde. Along with Leyland Triumph and the British Motor Corporation, these were mainstays of the Belgian automotive industry in the interwar and postwar periods. Not to mention the Audi Brussels assembly plant, which started out assembling Studebakers and VW Beetles in 1948, and has cranked out some eight million vehicles.

Belgian engineering skills, and high-quality production standards coupled with the country’s convenient geographical location and membership of the-then European Common Market made it an attractive choice for volume production. Ford at Genk was churning out 470,000 Sierras and Mondeos in 1994, the General Motors factory in Antwerp which became the European centre of Opel production until its closure in 2010 had originally opened on April 2, 1925, producing CKD Chevrolets and Cadillacs. This may explain why, following the demise of Minerva, the Belgian royal family opted for Cadillacs in the 1950s and 1960s as the preferred royal transport.

So, what happened?

A process of adaptation and specialisation kept, and still keeps, the Belgian motor industry flame alight. Indeed, the Belgian automotive industry, in all of its branches, still employed 160,000 skilled workers in 2022 (over 2.6% of Belgium’s GDP). Belgium remains a centre of innovation and quality yet only has one remaining domestic car manufacturer – Gillet - as well as a bus manufacturer, Van Hool.

Such was the quality of Minerva’s earliest offerings that before joining forces with Henry Royce in 1904, Charles Rolls was a luxury car dealer in London selling Minerva cars.

The Gillet Vertigo

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 21

Gillet is a niche manufacturer based in Gembloux and founded in 1992 by Belgian racing car driver Tony Gillet. Its product, the Vertigo, is a handbuilt ultra lightweight supercar. Van Hool, the global bus and coach manufacturer, was founded in 1947 by Bernard van Hool (1902–1974) in Koningshooikt, near Lier filed for bankruptcy in April of this year and was saved a few days later when its trustees accepted a takeover bid from the Dutch company VDL (see separate article).

Despite foreign manufacturers closing their factories due to global overcapacity and internal rationalisation – Renault in the 1990s, Opel in early 2010 and Ford in 2007 – the industry survives. There may be question marks over Audi in Brussels, but Volvo Cars and Volvo Trucks in Ghent are both cranking out top-of-the-range vehicles.

This is largely because the remaining assembly plants remain world class. Volvo Trucks in Ghent has an annual production of over 45,000 units. And Belgium is also a hub

for sophisticated component manufacture.

Ferrari and AMG high-performance transmissions are designed and produced in Zeldegem by Tremec. Automatic transmissions are built in Braine L’Alleud by AWEurope.

Millions of components are manufactured by companies like VALEO, Continental and TYCO Electronics.

In addition, Belgium is the home of key research and development centres including Toyota in Zaventem and Ford in Lommel. On top of this are the customizers like Jem Design in Brakel, who are world leaders in aftermarket bodywork kits.

The success of Addax the e-truck manufacturer in Deerlijk shows clearly that today the focus has come full circle back to the zero-emission vehicles of Belgium’s automotive pioneers – they were 125 years ahead of their time.

If Jenatzy were here today, he surely would be smiling wryly. Far from being “jamais contente” he would say, “très contente.”

The Belgian automotive industry, in all of its branches, still employed 160,000 skilled workers in 2022 (over 2.6% of Belgium’s GDP).

Top: When the Grand Place was a car park. Above left: The test track on the roof of the Imperia factory at Nessonvaux. Above right: The APAL car, produced sportscars using fibre-reinforced plastic

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PROMOTED CONTENT

Empowering EU mobile citizens' political participation

More than ever, it is crucial to reinforce the right of EU mobile citizens to vote and stand as candidates in elections in the EU country where they reside.

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he opportunity to freely travel, reside, work, and pursue education in any EU country has been transformative for citizens and is a core aspect of European Union citizenship. This year, a record-breaking number of elections will take place in 50 countries, attracting over 2 billion voters globally.

More than ever, it is crucial to reinforce the right of EU mobile citizens to vote and stand as candidates in elections in the EU country where they reside. While a significant 74% cherish the ability to vote while living abroad, many EU mobile citizens lack interest in their host country's political landscape, resulting in low political participation.

Under the same conditions as nationals, every citizen of the Union has the right to vote and to run for office in municipal and European elections in the country they reside in, as enshrined in Article 40 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

24 | THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE

In the current political sphere, elections are a pivotal defence against rising anti-democratic forces that threaten our core freedoms and the foundational principles of the European Union, including the rule of law and human rights.

The European Union boasts approximately 11 million mobile EU citizens of who are eligible to vote, constituting over 2% of the total voting demographic across the EU. Yet, numerous barriers impeding the political engagement of EU mobile citizens need proactive solutions to enable their active involvement in the democratic process.

In recent years, the European Citizen Action Service (ECAS) has conducted several focus groups in Member States holding municipal elections. These sessions aimed to uncover the reasons behind the lack of engagement of EU mobile citizens in their host countries and explore solutions that can foster their political rights and encourage them both to vote and stand as candidates.

The findings from the focus groups indicate that the main barriers to political engagement of EU mobile citizens can be categorised into four groups: 1) Language barriers.

2) Administrative burdens (including lack of training of civil servants).

3) Lack of precise data on participation.

4) Limited awareness of citizens on the role of the EU institutions.

Efforts to engage EU mobile citizens in political awareness campaigns are lacking. This is compounded by language barriers that hinder access to vital information on voting procedures and political manifestos that are often not translated into English or the most widely spoken language of the EU mobile community.

Further action is also needed to alleviate administrative burdens and streamline procedures, as registration processes are often complex, with deadlines set months before the voting day, and options like proxy voting or e-voting are very limited in most Member States, if not non-existent. Moreover, municipalities fail to engage with the EU mobile community to inform them about their right to vote and stand as candidates for both EU and municipal elections. Enhanced training of civil servants dealing with EU mobile citizens would be needed to ensure adequate knowledge about EU political rights and effectively inform newcomers.

To understand why political participation is low, it is also essential to gather precise data on the political participation of EU mobile citizens in municipal and European Parliament elections in their host Member State. The EU mobile community does not constitute a hetero-

geneous group. Therefore, understanding the level of participation in each sub-group (e.g., age, duration of the stay in the host country, language proficiency, etc.) can provide insights into specific barriers each group faces.

The EU mobile community is the embodiment of an integrated European Union that gives each citizen the right to freedom of movement and residence, a cornerstone of EU citizenship as established by the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992.

The new European Commission and Members of the European Parliament are urged to promote awareness, facilitate the political involvement of EU mobile citizens, and address current barriers. This is an essential demographic with the power to make an effective difference in elections. Streamlining processes in all Member States and informing EU mobile citizens about their political rights upon arrival is crucial to make it easier for them to feel empowered in their rights when settling in a new Member State.

We at the European Citizen Action Service (ECAS) remain committed to advocating for better and higher political participation of the EU mobile community in both municipal and EU elections, providing training to civil servants at the local level, increasing awareness of EU rights, and driving collective action to empower EU mobile citizens' democratic participation in their host countries.

Marta Azevedo Silva, Communications Manager at the European Citizen Action Service (ECAS)

Streamlining processes in all Member States and informing EU mobile citizens about their political rights upon arrival is crucial to make it easier for them to feel empowered in their rights when settling in a new Member State.

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 25

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Over and Audi Cars have been built at the Brussels assembly plant in Forest for the past 75 years, starting with the American Studebaker, but the current owner, Audi, is set to leave next year. The decision has sent shockwaves through Belgium’s automotive industry, leaving almost 3,000 workers uncertain about their future. With no new buyer in sight, it looks like the end of the road for carmaking in Brussels, Dennis Abbott asks what went wrong THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 27

T Audi blamed its decision on a sharp drop in orders for its flagship Q8 e-tron models, amid increasing competition in the electric luxury class market where the fourring brand is up against Tesla, Volvo, Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar and Porsche, as well as subsidised Chinese makes.

he slick opening promotional video on the Audi Brussels website gives little hint of impending doom.

Far from it. Against the backdrop of a suitably propulsive soundtrack, the footage begins with a dramatic aerial shot of the sprawling urban plant in Forest (Vorst), located to the west of the city centre next to the ring road.

The camera pans down to the carbon-neutral factory’s expansive roof-top, covered in solar panels. It’s a message. In case the viewer doesn’t immediately catch on, the word “sustainability” pops up, followed by “we set the course…for a sustainable future.”

It’s a line that hasn’t aged well.

The camera then takes us inside the stateof-the-art, 1.5 km long, spotless assembly hall, capable of producing nearly 200 Audi Q8 e-tron models a day. We see lines of gleaming, dancing yellow robots, busy building out the skeletons of each car – lifting, drilling, fixing and welding hundreds of the parts which go into the construction of each electric vehicle (EV).

There are humans in the picture, too, doing highly skilled things. Men and women of varying ages and from different backgrounds.

This diversity is highlighted in the video with a series of beaming portraits of smiling employees, overlaid with the word “together”. A happy worker peers through a partially built car and forms a heart shape with his hands.

Just over two minutes long, the film ends with the line: “Audi Brussels. Where we create masterpieces with passion” – a nod perhaps towards Belgium’s artistic heritage.

It seems a tad surprising no-one has thought of taking it down, in view of recent developments which have left nearly 3,000 workers facing a precarious future.

The bombshell news of the plant’s “restructuring” – in the eyes of many a euphemism for its likely permanent closure – came in the second week of July, just before it shut for

the summer break. By late October, Audi confirmed the worst: it would end production at the Brussels plant in February 2025. The management has also promised that there will be no redundancies in 2024 and is continuing its search for a buyer.

Audi blamed its decision on a sharp drop in orders for its flagship Q8 e-tron models, amid increasing competition in the electric luxury class market where the four-ring brand is up against Tesla, Volvo, Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar and Porsche, as well as subsidised Chinese makes. The German carmaker also pointed to “long-standing structural challenges” which have dogged the site in Forest.

Production of the Q8 e-tron is expected to move to Audi’s newest plant at San José Chiapa in Mexico, where labour costs are substantially lower – average monthly pay is about a quarter of the level in Brussels.

Audi’s restructuring announcement sparked a furious response.

Sor Hillal, general secretary of the FGTB (fédération générale du travail de Belgique) trade union, blasted what he called “rampant deindustrialisation.” As tensions threatened to spiral out of control, workers at the plant, returning after the summer, were locked out after seizing the keys to nearly 300 new and unfinished cars.

While Audi management and unions agreed to resume production, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Brussels to express solidarity with the Forest workforce.

New investors or buyers have been sought, with longtime Volkswagen Group importer D’Ieteren and Chinese carmaker NIO mentioned as possible white knights.

D’Ieteren was thought to be considering turning the site into a reconditioning centre for used cars, also known as recon, which is the process of repairing and restoring all aspects of the vehicle before resale. And while NIO was linked to the plant, CEO William Li

Above: Protesters outside the Audi plant on September 9, left, and a week later in central Brussels, right. Previous pages: Workers protest outside the factory, burning four tyres arranged like the Audi logo

28 | THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE

dismissed the notion. “How could NIO afford a factory that Audi cannot afford,” he told a Chinese news site.

Audi says that it has already looked at more than 20 alternative business models but found no economically viable solution for the plant.

In the meantime, it has launched talks with unions under the so-called Renault Act, introduced in 1998 after the sudden closure of the French carmaker’s factory in Vilvoorde with the loss of around 3,500 jobs. The law states that advance notice must be given of mass redundancies and that the government can demand repayment of state subsidies (which could amount to at least €20 million in tax incentives and aid for greening and training at Audi Brussels).

‘Wrong bet’ The Brussels plant was built in 1948 by D'Ieteren, and since then, countless models have been made there, from the American Studebaker to the VW Beetle and Golf to the Seat Toledo and Porsche 356 to electric Audis. The plant changed hands in 1970 when it was sold to Volkswagen, and again in 2006, when Audi took it over. But this time, it looks like the end of the road for carmaking in Brussels.

So where did it all go wrong?

I asked four experts for their views on the Belgian carmaking sector and whether Audi could have done anything to avert the present crisis.

First up is Professor Paul De Grauwe, a former senator and one of Belgium’s most distinguished economists, who describes himself as “an avid reader of the Brussels Times”.

He believes Audi made a “strategic mistake” in focusing on high-end electric vehicles. With a range of up to 600km, and prices starting at €91,690, the Q8 e-tron is not cheap. “They made the wrong bet. The problem is they are addicted to the luxury market. The Chinese are much cleverer in developing smaller electric cars and aiming for a mass market.”

De Grauwe, who is an emeritus professor at KU Leuven and lectures at the London School of Economics (LSE), has long predicted a decline in the Belgian auto sector, for three main reasons: globalisation, delocalisation and technological progress. “We shouldn’t be surprised about what’s happened,” he says.

He points to a collapse in domestic car production since the closure of Renault, with Opel shutting its Antwerp base in 2010 with the loss of 2,600 jobs and Ford ending operations in Genk in 2014 with 4,000 redundancies, not to mention thousands more jobs which have vanished in supply chains.

Part of the problem, De Grauwe explains, is that the Belgian industry has concentrated on assembling cars rather than on making them.

“We’re a small country and import a lot from our bigger neighbours. The value-added from

The assembly line for the Q8 e-tron inside the Brussels plant

assembling cars is relatively small.”

Even if the workforce at Audi was to increase its productivity, this would not have helped. “When productivity goes up, it just means prices will fall and so will employment levels.”

He sympathises with Audi, however, over the constraints it has faced due to the site’s location in a congested, built-up inner-city area, where there is no room for further expansion. In contrast, the 78-year-old professor points out that Elon Musk’s Tesla plant at Gruenheide, outside Berlin, has “plenty of space” to grow.

Asked whether the Belgian government should step in and provide additional subsidies to Audi, De Grauwe shakes his head.

“No, that’s a very foolish policy. If firms run into trouble they leave anyway. Governments should invest in public goods like education and R&D – not in trying to pick winners.”

Although he paints a rather gloomy picture, De Grauwe insists that there is hope. He is confident Belgians will find “new outlets”, especially, but not only, in the services economy. “I remember people were very pessimistic in the 1970s when the steel and textile industries were struggling, but industry continued,” he says.

They made the wrong bet.

The problem is they are addicted to the luxury market.

The Chinese are much cleverer in developing smaller electric cars and aiming for a mass market.

Cheaper labour Leo Van Hoorick, curator of the Autoworld museum in Brussels, shares De Grauwe’s diagnosis of a sector in decline.

“The car manufacturing industry is very sick – not only in Belgium but in the rest of Europe, too. At the end of the 1970s, Belgium was the biggest car producer per capita in the world. But then production began to move to eastern Europe and Turkey where labour costs were cheaper,” he says.

Despite a proud manufacturing history its brands such as Minerva in Antwerp, Excelsior

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 29

Left: The plant when it was assembling Studenbakers and Volkswagens in the 1950s. The Beetle assembly

At the end of the 1970s, Belgium was the biggest car producer per capita in the world. But then production began to move to eastern Europe and Turkey where labour costs were cheaper.

in Zaventem and Impéria in Nessonvaux, Van Hoorick acknowledges that the seeds of the industry’s problems go back a long time.

It was more than a century ago that the government brought in a law which forced foreign carmakers selling more than 250 vehicles in Belgium to build an assembly plant in the country. It seemed a good idea at the time.

Ford arrived in 1922, followed soon after by GM, Citroën and Renault, with Peugeot joining them just before the Second World War. The plants created thousands of jobs.

“It was easy to import parts through the port at Antwerp – and, thanks to tax breaks, it was much cheaper to assemble cars in Belgium than to import the finished product,” says Van Hoorick.

But this also meant there was less incentive for Belgian firms to design and build their own brands. Excelsior was bought by Impéria which shut in 1948, and Minerva disappeared in 1956.

If poor decisions with unintended consequences were made in the past, Van Hoorick points to two much more recent, inter-connected “major errors”.

“One of the biggest mistakes we’ve seen is the fault of the European Union,” he says, referring to a law which will require all new cars and vans sold in Europe to be zero-emission from 2035. “The infrastructure for electric vehicles wasn’t there and the market didn’t follow. They hoped the market would expand, but it hasn’t yet,” he states.

Audi’s decision to focus entirely on electric cars at its Brussels plant was equally misguided, in his view. “Audi had to build a completely new assembly line. Electric cars are much heavier than their internal combustion engine equivalents. The battery alone typically adds 500-600kg, so the floor in the factory had to be strengthened. In fact, they built a completely new building within the building – and only five or so years ago. It was a very big investment.”

Van Hoorick also highlights what he describes as long-term workforce issues at Forest. “I’m not surprised the factory is closing.

30 | THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE

There were always problems there, with strikes being called for ridiculous reasons like a shortage of coffee. You never hear of union trouble at Volvo in Gent,” he adds.

Looking at the bigger picture, he predicts that Audi’s factories in Germany will also come under increasing competitive pressure. “Manufacturers prefer to close factories abroad first so they will keep plants in their home market open for as long as possible. Remember, the same happened with Renault at Vilvoorde. It was said to be the firm’s most efficient factory in Europe, but headquarters shut it rather than close plants in France,” he says.

Steering the transition Jude Kirton-Darling, general secretary industriAll Europe, a trade union federation, takes a different view. She insists a solution must be found to save the plant and avoid what she terms “destructive restructuring”.

While acknowledging that Audi was “slightly ahead of their time” and “bet on the wrong horse” when making the decision to transform its Forest site for EV production, she says it would be “wasteful to allow the plant to close and see everything stripped away.”

“If production capacity is lost, it’s a significant loss for Belgium more generally,” she warns, while taking issue with “liberal economists” who question the validity of subsidies.

“In my experience, if you’re trying to steer a transition to emission-free vehicles, you need an industrial policy that allows the stimulation of that transition. It’s naïve to think you can stimulate such a transformation and the massive cultural shift required without doing this,” she says.

To prove her point, she refers to the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its tax incentives to boost electric vehicle production.

The 2022 law also benefitted the car sector in Mexico and Canada because they are part of a free-trade bloc with the US. “The IRA actually encouraged Audi to build its smaller A6 in

Mexico,” she adds.

A former member of the European Parliament, Kirton-Darling is scathing about what she sees as the lack of a continent-wide industrial policy. “What we’re seeing is the rhetoric of an industrial policy but with resources stripped away - and a return to austerity.”

She also criticises the EU law requiring all new cars to be zero-emission in just over a decade. “We’ve never taken a policy on a specific date, but a target without a plan will always fail. Without a plan, you don’t get to your destination. It’s like going on a journey without a map.”

Less manufacturing The fourth expert is Brieuc Janssens, Brussels manager for Agoria, the Belgian federation of technology companies. Like the others, he is “unsurprised” by the developments at Audi.

“The context is tough – we see less and less manufacturing in Brussels. But we need to create jobs here which aren’t just in services or administration,” he says.

Janssens, who took part in recent hearings on the current crisis at the national

Parliament (Audi’s management was also invited but failed to attend), fears that it could be very difficult to find an investor who will come up with a satisfactory offer.

“It might be that the region will end up buying the plant,” he suggests. “This happened with the Ford site in Genk and Caterpillar at Charleroi which were sold for a euro. What we don’t want is to see the land sold off for housing. We need to keep manufacturing jobs in Brussels.”

In the case of Genk, the site was transformed into various units including logistics operations. It was “very dynamic, involved a lot of upskilling and saved jobs,” says Janssens. The initial regional ‘takeover’ at Charleroi was less successful with many jobs lost and the authorities have since decided to follow Genk’s example by splitting up the site and targeting the logistics sector.

For Janssens, the ideal long-term solution for Forest is a public-private partnership, based on a strategic plan that focuses on three priorities: industry (“retaining manufacturing jobs”), R&D (“creating more sustainable jobs”), and close links with high schools and universities (“to give opportunities to the young”).

The infrastructure for electric vehicles wasn’t there and the market didn’t follow. They hoped the market would expand, but it hasn’t yet.

Left: Rows of Beetles awaiting delivery. Middle: Brussels-made Beetles on train transporters. Right: The upholstery shop

A brief history of Audi Audi was founded in 1909 by German engineer and automobile pioneer August Horch, five years after creating a business he named after himself. In the early 1930s, Audi and Horch merges with DKW and Wanderer to form Auto Union, which uses four interlinked rings as its logo.

Richard Bruhn, a committed Nazi party member, is chairman of Auto Union from 1932-1945. Released from captivity after the war, he relaunches the business with support from the US Marshall Plan. (In 2014 Audi commissioned a study into Auto Union’s wartime record. It found the company worked with the SS to build seven camps where at least 3,700 prisoners were put to work. It also employed 16,500 forced labourers at its factories in Zwickau and Chemnitz).

In 1958, Daimler-Benz takes an 87% holding in Auto Union, increasing its stake to 100% a year later.

In 1964, Volkswagen acquires 50% of the business and relaunches the Audi brand.

In 1969, Auto Union merges with NSU Motorenwerke, creating Audi NSU Auto Union, which ultimately becomes Audi.

In 1970, Hans Bauer, a member of Audi’s advertising department, comes up with the slogan ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ (Progress through Technology).

In 2015, Audi admits that at least two million of its cars are involved in the Volkswagen diesel emissions testing scandal.

Today Audi produces cars in many worldwide locations.

In addition to Brussels, there are three Audi plants in Germany at Ingolstadt, Neckarsulm and Zwickau, and others in Mexico, Slovakia, Spain, Hungary, Spain, Russia, Brazil, India, and China (six locations).

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 31

What we don’t want is to see the land sold off for housing. We need to keep manufacturing jobs in Brussels.

tects Audi Brussels employees and suppliers.

Former Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo, now an MEP, made his views clear about the stark situation facing Audi Brussels in a question to the European Commission, co-signed by fellow socialist MEPs Estelle Ceulemans, former general secretary of the FGTB Brussels trade union Kathleen Van Brempt and Bruno Tobback.

It calls for “the preservation of jobs and production, and safeguarding and further developing of green innovative technologies and industry within Europe”, adding that the “reindustrialisation of Europe needs to go hand in hand with measures that encourage local manufacturing”.

The MEPs asked the Commission to spell out how it plans to prevent the closure or relocation of manufacturing sites crucial for sustainable transition and what incentives it will create.

At the time of writing, the Commission was yet to reply.

It’s not the end

Top: The 300,000th Beetle made at the plant, Above: Protesters burn tyres outside the plant

Political intervention In October, outgoing Prime Minister Alexander De Croo met management and union representatives, and called for a social plan to pro-

Meanwhile, back at the plant, spokesperson Peter D’hoore confirms that around 85% of Audi Brussels’ 3,000 employees have now returned to work. Of those, around 2,000 are directly involved in production. “We have two shifts working e ight hours. Our current target is for each shift to produce 12 cars per hour,” he says.

Asked what the mood is like among the workforce, D’hoore is surprisingly buoyant. “I have a positive outlook,” he insists. “We’re not at the end.”

Timeline of the Forest plant 1948: Pierre D’Ieteren lays the first brick for a new car plant on the outskirts of Brussels. He signs a contract with Volkswagen to become its official Belgian supplier.

1949: The first car rolls off the assembly line, a Studebaker.

1954: The plant starts producing the Volkswagen Beetle.

1961: Among a roster of brands, the factory also assembles the Porsche 356.

1970: Volkswagen takes over the Forest plant. It produces its millionth VW Beetle.

1975: Pierre D’Ieteren and his wife die in a car crash – in his Audi.

1980: The plant starts producing the VW Golf.

2001: Production of VW Lupo begins.

2004: Production of the Audi A3 starts.

2005: Foundations laid for a state-of-the-art automotive park for supply and logistics. A bridge connects it to the production halls.

2006: Volkswagen moves VW Golf production at Wolfsburg and Mosel. Following a restructuring agreement, partly brokered by then-Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, 2,200 jobs are saved in Forest as it is sold to Audi.

2007: Audi takes over the plant. It continues to produce the VW

32 | THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE

Polo for two years.

2010: Start of production of the Audi A1, the first model to be made exclusively in Brussels.

2013: Commissioning of 37,000 square meter photovoltaic power plant.

2014: Celebrations to mark the 500,000th Audi A1 produced at Forest, with a visit by King Philippe.

2018: Audi e-tron, the brand’s first fully electric-powered SUV (sports utility vehicle), goes into production. Assembly of Audi A1 moves to Martorell (Spain).

2019: Expansion of automotive park and photovoltaic power plant.

2020: Audi e-tron Sportback in production. Audi Brussels receives ‘Factory of the Future’ award.

2021: Audi Brussels builds its 100,000th e-tron.

2022: Q8 e-tron and Q8 Sportback e-tron go into production.

2024: The first Q8 e-tron edition Dakar rolls off the production line. Thomas Bogus succeeds Volker Germann as Managing Director of Audi Brussels after it announces restructuring plan. Since the end of 2018, Audi has produced 250,000 electric cars in Brussels.

110 YEARS

Wolfgang - stock.adobe.com

MORE INFO

19.12.24 - 23.02.25 EXHIBITION AT AUTOWORLD Parc du Cinquantenaire 11 Jubelpark, 1000 Brussels

AUTOWORLD.BE

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For the Pandemic Agreement to be successful, it must include binding provisions for technology transfer, intellectual property sharing, and the establishment of local manufacturing in LMICs. Europe, as a leader in global health, must champion these commitments. If the current text remains focused on “voluntary” or “mutually agreed terms,” we will see the same inequities repeated, leaving the Global South dependent on handouts instead of being self-sufficient in the face of future pandemics.

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The Volvo village where cars marry, robots hum and efficiency reigns The team from 80 nations at Ghent’s Volvo plant is a factory of efficient ambition, producing a car every 79 seconds. From a storied past – with a deals sketched on a menu – to a future powered by zero-emission EVs, the Ghent facility remains a resilient outlier in Belgian car manufacturing.

Lisa Bradshaw sees heritage meet high-tech

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 37

B Lars sketched the design for the plant on the back of a menu.

ikes whizz by as you wait at a pedestrian crossing. On the other side, you wave at your friends from all over the world. You pull on a cable above your head to play some music before stopping by a lunch stand. Finally, you are off to witness a “marriage” and go for a trim.

Sounds like a charming little village, right?

In a way, it is. It’s the Volvo car manufacturing plant in Ghent, home to 6,500 workers made up of 80 nationalities. With a car rolling off the line every 79 seconds, it is run with an efficiency that most village mayors would envy.

Volvo Cars Gent has been running continuously since the first car – the Amazon – rolled off the belt in 1965. It was the second Volvo car manufacturing facility, and the first outside of Sweden.

“A young engineer, Lars Malmros, was sent to scout sites in Europe,” explains Pieter Philips, my tour guide at the colossal plant in the city’s harbour. “They visited Hamburg, Bremen, Berlin. They visited Antwerp and Rotterdam. They did not come to Ghent.”

Buoyed by the fact that an independent im-

Above and previous pages: inside the Volvo’s Ghent plant

38 | THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE

porter was doing some light assembly of Volvo cars in Brussels, Ghent’s city councillor responsible for the port invited the engineer for a visit. As the story goes, there was an evening of wining and dining, and the question was asked: “What do you need from us to build this plant here?”

“Lars sketched the design for the plant on the back of a menu,” says Philips. “He said, ‘That’s what I want’. And they said, ‘OK, we’ll arrange it.’”

And they did. While Ghent is 30 km from the sea, its connection via the Ghent-Terneuzen canal and Scheldt river is solid. It had the road and rail connections and the technical schools it needed to make the new plant a success.

The Ghent facility operates 24 hours a day, five days a week in three shifts. Philips himself worked in the steel division at Volvo Cars Gent for more than 35 years until his retirement.

Tours of the plant are often given by former workers because no one knows it better than they do.

Cars start out in the welding division, before moving to painting and then final assembly and trimming. In the assembly section, Pieter walks me past the wall of fame – models that have been cut in half from top to bottom and mounted high on the wall. Belts bring undercarriages past workers who grab tools and parts to perform various tasks. If they are missing a part, they pull a cord above their heads, which plays a specific piece of music, alerting the supervisor that help is needed.

Thousands of robotic arms of varying sizes do the heavy lifting and precision work, like placing the windshields. One of the most impressive feats in assembly is the joining of the body of the car to the undercarriage. It’s fully automated and referred to as “the wedding”.

Volvo Cars Gent – part of Volvo Car AB, now owned by China’s Geely Holding – is currently manufacturing the luxury crossover SUV XC40 (hybrid and electric) and the fully electric compact SUV EX40, as well as the crossover electric cousin EC40. The V60 hybrid body is manufactured in Sweden and sent to Ghent for painting and trimming. Ghent will also produce the fully electric subcompact EX30 starting next year. New Volvos are only built once sold to a customer, so workers might see an XC40 one moment, and an EC40 the next.

Defaming remarks and inappropriate suffering entertainment are omitted, because even the Swedish/Belgian subsidiary the Chinese Geely Holding knows from experience that these kinds of doom scenarios can just fall out of the blue. With an annual production of 230,000 passenger cars and a workforce of 7,000 employees, Volvo Ghent is currently one of the most important (and largest) employers in Belgium, but even that offers no guarantees, as the bankruptcy battlefield from the past teaches us.

The Chinese car conglomerate is already anticipating the high import tariffs for Chinese cars that the European Commission wants to introduce in the short term, ranging between 20 and 50 percent. China is competing in unfair competition by subsidizing its own manufacturers and supplying cheap raw materials, said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who said she hoped to “be able to somewhat dam the overflow of over-subsidized Chinese electric cars. In response to that penalty levy, Volvo immediately announced that it would no longer build its new small electric SUV EX30 only in China, but also in Ghent. Volvo Ghent will still be able to benefit from the increased import tariffs in the coming years, but the decision to build the EX30 in Europe is completely independent of the increased import tariffs, according to Volvo CEO Jim Rowan. "We build our cars where we sell them and the Volvo EX30 is a greater success in Europe than in China." In the Belgian market alone, the mini-SUV caused a sales increase of no less than 30 percent.

Volvo Car Ghent was already the largest factory of the brand, but it goes without saying that the Chinese family expansion cannot be realized without heavy investments in capacity expansion and personnel.

How can people recognise a Volvo? Philips points to the taillights. “They’re shaped like Thor’s hammer,” he says.

Volvo thrives One by one, car manufacturing plants in Belgium have shut their doors: Renault Vilvoorde in 1997, General Motors Antwerp in 2010, Ford Genk in 2014. In 2007, Volkswagen restructured the plant in Brussels to produce its Audi brand. And now Audi is in trouble.

Conversely, Ghent’s Volvo facility pumps out more than 230,500 cars a year – as many (and in some years more) as the headquarters in Gothenburg. Together the plants produce two-thirds of all the brand’s cars, despite there being four more manufacturing plants – one in the US and three in China. In the face of it all, Volvo Cars Gent isn’t just surviving, it’s thriving.

Which begs the question: Why? “Because of that,” says Geert Bruyneel, laughing and pointing to a large-scale photograph of a Volvo vehicle. I get his point. It’s the car, stupid.

We’re sitting in a conference room at the plant, which Bruyneel ran from 2010 to 2013.

A Belgian, he joined Volvo in the 1980s as an engineer and has since worked from Sweden, Ghent and China, managing quality control and global supply chains. These days he’s back in Sweden acting as a senior advisor to the brand’s Scottish CEO. But today Bruyneel is in Ghent to talk to me about what makes Volvo Cars tick.

“I have always said that there are two things

Top: The ‘wedding’. Above: The Hall of Fame

that are important,” he says. “We continue to invest in this plant to make sure it’s up to date and capable of launching new cars. You have to continue to be relevant to the company. This plant has always been a hub of highly competent people, both on the production lines and in engineering.”

He points to employee recruitment and development, which he sees as a crucial aspect of Ghent’s success. “More and more we are a tech company, so we have to recruit people with the right background - and of course we continue their development here. We stimulate this enormously, working to empower people to grow in their jobs, to take accountability and ownership.”

The second thing, he says, is location, location, location. “Belgium is an excellent hub for both trade and the supply chain. The majority of our customers are in Western Europe. And because we are close to the sea, we export to the US. We’ve benefitted from that since the beginning. With the disruptions that go on in the world, it’s important to have a low-risk supply chain.”

More and more we are a tech company, so we have to recruit people with the right background - and of course we continue their development here.

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 39

Zero emission ambition

If you are not an industry insider, you cannot comprehend how strong that safety culture is.

We continue to try to be a pioneer in that, and it is keeping us at the top of the pyramid.

All of Volvo’s new cars are either hybrids or fully electric, with the goal of producing only fully electric models by 2030. On the very day of my visit to the plant, receives – with much ceremony – the customer who bought the one-millionth XC40/EX40. It is the first time any Volvo plant has produced one million units of the same model.

Still, Volvo’s electric models are being outsold by Tesla and Volkswagen in the European car market. “We are producing premium cars,” says Bruyneel. “We’re not competing for the last euro. We are not trying to get the highest market share or the highest volume. We want to stick to the roots of our brand.”

A key factor in Volvo’s reputation is safety.

In 1959, it invented the seat belt, handing out the design freely to other manufacturers. Each car contains 400 different kinds of steel – from crush-proof boron alloys to impact-absorbing crash steel – a high number for the automotive industry.

“We are pioneers in safety,” Bruyneel states, as he points to the future of self-driving vehi-

Top: The plant in the 1960s. Above left and right: Today’s assembly line

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cles. “You really have to trust a car if you’re not driving it,” he chuckles. “That requires extreme confidence. We’re not there yet.”

The implication is that Volvo will get us there. “If you are not an industry insider, you cannot comprehend how strong that safety culture is. We continue to try to be a pioneer in that, and it is keeping us at the top of the pyramid.”

Considering Belgium’s strong union culture and the size of Volvo Cars Gent, the lack of industrial action is quite remarkable. So infrequent are labour disputes that everyone is still talking about the big three-week strike of 1978. “It was then that the foundation was laid for future labour negotiations,” explains Dirck Bogaert, one of Volvo’s ACV union representatives. “The CEO at the time made the firm decision to position unions as partners rather than the enemy. The idea was: No more strikes.”

Since then, conflicts have led to temporary work stoppages at most. According to Bogaert, this is because a typical top-down approach has been abandoned. Union members are in close contact with the board of directors, and decisions are made with their approval before they are implemented.

Even when Volvo sold the car division to Ford in 1999, and when Ford sold it to the Geely group a decade later, work continued as usual.

“We were of course worried when the company was sold to the Chinese,” says Bogaert. “But it quickly became clear that they respected the way we operate. Nothing changed. Quite the opposite: Geely said to stay Volvo, to stay who we are.”

Bruyneel refers to this identity as well in explaining Volvo’s appeal. “There’s this Scandinavian heritage in design and materials but also this special thing, this mystery. It’s a kind of feeling in the brand. It’s more than just metal.

You can’t copy that.”

It sounds a bit over the top. But the other evening, my partner and I were sitting at a traffic light. That’s a Volvo in front of us, I mentioned. It was too dark to see the logo, but I saw the taillights – shaped like Thor’s hammer.

42 | THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE

How D’Ieteren created a €10 billion Belgian empire From a modest Brussels workshop founded in 1805, the D’Ieteren family has grown its enterprise into a global powerhouse valued at over €10 billion. It now spans car distribution, glass repair, and even stationery, writes Ellen O’Regan

F

rom humble beginnings in a Brussels workshop more than two centuries ago, the D’Ieteren family has grown its car-centred empire into an international success - and one of Belgium’s most valuable companies, worth over €10 billion.

Since 1805, the business has survived Napoleon’s march across Europe, Belgium’s independence revolution, two World Wars and, of course, the transformative arrival of the internal combustion engine.

At D’Ieteren Group’s headquarters on Rue du Mail in Brussels, a private showroom is filled bumper-to-bumper with glittering models.

The 2,300m² gallery floor showcases around 100 vehicles, from luxury horse-drawn carriages decked out in ivory and mahogany, to iconic motors like Studebakers and Volkswagen Beetles.

The gallery tracks not only how personal transport evolved through decades, but also how the D’Ieteren family adapted their business to survive.

“It’s the history of the family and the business, with the touch of art history to appreciate the pieces itself,” explains gallery curator Danaë Vermeulen, as we begin the tour that she usually gives to visiting car fanatics, motor clubs and companies.

The family business has been handed down from father to son for seven generations, with each new era for the business bringing its own trials and triumph (the D’Ieteren women also “did interesting things”, Vermeulen says, adding that she hopes to someday give them greater prominence in the telling of the family and company history).

Wheels in motion Jean-Joseph D’Ieteren started in 1805 making wooden wheels at a central Brussels workshop on Rue de Marais, for both car-

riages and bicycles, catering to the busy passing trade on the nearby Allée Verte along the canal.

Step by step, the ambitious wheelwright worked his way up to crafting full wooden carriages, pouring his heart into a Tilbury wooden model that was showcased at the ‘Exposition generale des produits d’Industrie’ held in Brussels in 1830.

“It was a success. We have the newspapers that were very positive about his project,” explains Vermeulen as we pass a replica of the meticulously crafted wooden carriage.

Unfortunately for Jean-Joseph, praise for his model did not convert into sales. The following month, Belgium was upended by its independence revolution, and he would die shortly after, in January 1831, aged 45.

Parisian luxury in Brussels

Unfortunately for Jean-Joseph, praise for his model did not convert into sales. The following month, Belgium was upended by its independence revolution, and he would die shortly after, in January 1831, aged 45.

After his death, Jean Joseph’s two eldest sons took over the business. Guillaume continued to run the workshop, while Alexandre went to Paris to study design and absorb Parisian good taste. With the Belgian economy picking up, the brothers began to craft luxury carriages for the country’s burgeoning upper classes.

The family moved the workshop to Chaussee de Charleroi in Saint-Gilles in 1873, and shortly after, Alexandre’s sons Alfred and Émile took over the business, renaming it D’Ieteren Frères.

These brothers “take the business to the next level” according to Vermeulen, landing a contract to supply and maintain carriages for the Belgian Royal Family in 1887, and spearheading the move from horses to horsepower.

As the automobile business picked up

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 43

To cater to rapidly growing demand, D’Ieteren built a production plant in Forest in Brussels, next to a Citroën factory, with the first car assembled there in 1949, a Studebaker.

around the turn of the century, the D’Ieteren family used their coachbuilding expertise to build the bodies for luxury cars. While some carmakers supplied a finished product, others just manufactured the engine and chassis, leaving customers to find a coachbuilder to ‘equip’ their car according to their desires.

D’Ieteren was ideally placed for these commissions. They delivered their first car body to Belgian race car driver Camille Jenatzy in 1897, before relocating to a new workshop at Rue de Mail in Ixelles (where it is still based to this day, although in modernist 1960s offices), to expand and keep up with orders.

War, crisis and American aspirations D’Ieteren would spend more than 30 years in the luxury bodywork-making business, equipping chassis from 105 different brands including Minerva, Renault, Rolls-Royce and Mercedes. The transition to motor power at the beginning of the 20th century continued despite grumblings from more traditional

Belgian customers about the move “de la voiture à crotin à la voiture à potin” (from horse manure to exhaust fumes).

However, the First World War, followed by the Great Depression, hit demand for luxury vehicles: staff numbers dwindled from 500 to 73, and D’Ieteren had to find a way to diversify its business.

Lucien, the grandson of Alfred, took over the company, renaming it Anciens Établissements D’Ieteren Frères.

In 1931 D’Ieteren secured a contract to import American car brands Studebaker, and Piece and Arrow, joined by Auburns in 1934.

The last luxury bodies crafted by D’Ieteren left the factory in 1935, as the family turned instead to shipping American cars into Antwerp.

When European import taxes on completed cars began to eat into margins, D’Ieteren rejigged their Rue de Mail workshop to assemble the vehicles in Belgium, using as many local Belgian suppliers as possible.

“The fewer pieces that had to come from America the better. That’s how they kept the cars accessible – and they were very popular cars. It wasn’t luxury like we had before, and the demand was so high that producing in the workshop wasn’t enough,” says Vermeulen.

To cater to rapidly growing demand, D’Ieteren built a production plant in Forest in Brussels, next to a Citroën factory, with the first car assembled there in 1949, a Studebaker.

Catching the Beetle Bug

Top: Wooden cart made by Jean-Joseph D'Ieteren for the 1830 show, on display in the D’Ieteren museum. Above: The workshop in the 1930s

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By the mid-20th century, the idea of the mass-produced popular car was beginning to take off, and the company signed a pivotal contract with Volkswagen to bring the German car brand to the Belgian market.

The factory's activities evolved with the assembly of VW’s iconic Beetle, as well as the Transporter, the Karmann Ghia and even the Porsche 356.

D’Ieteren also ventured into the car rental market in the 1950s, offering the option for visitors to rent a Beetle which they could collect at the airport or train station in Brussels.

And by the 1960s, the company branched out into insurance, financing and car rental.

There were bumps in the road. Studebaker ceased trading in 1965, Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960 and subsequently nationalised D’Ieteren’s operations there, and the Forest factory had to be radically overhauled to make the VW Golf.

“The Beetle was a very simple car to produce,” Vermeulen explains. “The Golf was much more modern and complicated, so you needed different machinery.

In 1970, some 22 years after it was built and a few months before the millionth Beetle made in Belgium left the plant, Lucian’s son Pierre sold the Forest factory to Volkswagen.

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“Losing the Congo business, and having to modernise the factory, the bank wasn’t very happy,” says Vermeulen. “Pierre had to make the difficult decision to sell the factory.

Apparently, he really cried. That was the end of the industrial activities of D’Ieteren.”

However, the company is keen to show that it is much more than a car importer and distributor.

Next to its flagship offices on Rue De Mail, the huge ground floor showroom that once exhibited Volkswagens and Audis is now Lucien, a shop selling bicycles.

Going global After the death of Pierre in a car accident in 1975, his son Roland D’Ieteren took over the family business. A “car maniac”, according to Vermeulen, during college and his early career Roland tinkered with race car body designs anchored on VW Beetle engines.

He also began to diversify the family business, gaining a controlling interest in car

Top: Pierre D’Ieteren delivering his first Porsche to King Baudouin, around 1955. Below: A Studebaker. Above: D’Ieteren’s Ixelles offices

46 | THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE

rental company Avis Europe in 1989, and auto glass company Belron a decade later in 1999.

Belron, a British auto glass repair and replacement group which owns brands like Carglass and Autoglass, is today one of the biggest income streams for the D’Ieteren Group.

Roland D'Ieteren would also play a key role in persuading Audi to take over the Forest plant in 2006. He had been to boarding school with Ferdinand Piëch, Volkswagen Group’s then chairman, and the D'Ieteren and Piëch families would vacation together.

Roland even learned German with the Piëch family.

When Volkswagen announced it would halt production of the Golf, it was Roland D'Ieteren who brought then-Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt into contact with Piëch. Incentivised by the promise of subsidies and tax breaks, Piëch agreed that Audi, part of the VW Group, would make the A1 at the plant.

D’Ieteren would later go on to sell its stake in Avis Europe for more than €400 million in 2011, while more recently in 2016, the company ventured outside the auto world and bought Italian notebook manufacturer Moleskine.

Roland retired as chairman of D’Ieteren’s board of directors in 2017 and died at the end of 2020 at the age of 78, as the result of a coronavirus infection.

Next generation Today, the family business has been passed on to Roland’s son Nicolas D’Ieteren, currently chairman of the board. Nicolas bought out his cousin Olivier Périer earlier this year and now has a controlling 50.3% stake in the business. According to Forbes, he is the second richest person in Belgium, with a net worth of $3.9 billion (€3.62 billion).

The company’s automotive branch remains the official distributor of Volkswagen brands in Belgium, managing sales of Volkswagen, Audi, SEAT, Škoda, Bentley, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Rimac, Microlino and Porsche alongside spare parts and accessories.

The group reported revenues of more than €11.6 billion in 2023 and a net profit of more than €500 million.

It is still influential enough in that car business that the D’Ieteren name has been among those floated during discussions this autumn about the future of the Forest site, which current owner Audi is planning to leave.

However, the company is keen to show that it is much more than a car importer and distributor. Next to its flagship offices on Rue De Mail, the huge ground floor showroom that once exhibited Volkswagens and Audis is now Lucien, a shop selling bicycles. Named after Lucien D'Ieteren

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The rise, fall and future of Van Hool, Belgium’s busing pioneer Family-owned Belgian bus manufacturer Van Hool is considered a part of the country’s cultural heritage. But while it has outlasted conflicts, recessions, pandemics and political revolutions, will it be brought down in the end by unthrottled Chinese competition – or its own family feuding? Helen Lyons follows its 78-year-old story into its next, uncertain chapter

B

elgium’s last remaining vehicle manufacturer has seemingly spluttered to its final stop, engine wheezing.

In some ways, the Van Hool story is like any other recent narrative in the country’s beleaguered automotive industry: a difficult post-pandemic recovery, disruption and upheaval from the transition to electric, the woes attached to a consistently competitive vehicle manufacturing sector.

But behind the usual market factors is a level of personal drama that would rival the hit American television drama Succession, and indeed revolves around the titular issue. And if you think automobile manufacturing can’t be as sexy as the global media and entertainment conglomerate Succession centres around, you’ve never seen the interior of a Van Hool touring coach.

Van Hool was (or is, depending on your perspective or shareholdings) the gold standard. ‘Efficiency and elegance’ are how they brand themselves, and ‘a modern concept for a streamlined experience’, in adherence to the company values of reliability, quality and functionality.

Beyond their beautiful coaches, Van Hool tackled public transport and industrial vehicles, too. They garnered admiration from the sort of professionals and experts that could delineate a liftgate and a slack adjuster, a genset and a gearbox, a kingpin from a coupler. Buses for bus people, in other words. And they embraced new technology, building slick, tailored, green, clean vehicles that could be double-deckers, airport buses and tram-buses – as well as zero emission, fuel-celled and hydrogen-powered, if demanded.

But having the best product is only one determining factor of success in the ruthless yet staid automotive industry.

“Everyone loves the story of the company that succeeds purely on the strength of its product, but that story is increasingly rare in vehicle manufacturing,” explains auto industry analyst and author Edward Niedermeyer, who adds that

manufacturing is now a survivor’s game.

“Competition is so intense in many of these industries that products simply have no way to stand out in a sea of carefully benchmarked rivals. And even if your product is strong, it can be hard to break through the noise in today's fragmented, saturated media environment. We're seeing brands with strong products and legacies, from Jaguar to Alfa-Romeo, struggle with turnarounds like this,” he says.

Plenty of great shows are killed for ancillary reasons. And, spoiler alert: for Van Hool, despite season after season of success, quality alone couldn’t carry them through family drama and economic plot twists.

A solid debut Van Hool was a family company. Founded in 1947 by patriarch Bernard Van Hool, six of its first 22 employees were relatives: Bernard himself, a brother-in-law, four sons. By 1954 its name was changed to Van Hool en Zonen (and sons). As the wealth and prestige attached to the family company grew, so too did the family: Bernard would go on to have 10 children in total: eight sons, two daughters.

Bernard had a lifelong fascination with machines and already had a few inventions under his belt before World War II. It was perhaps no surprise then that the company had a strong pilot, their first coachworks inspired by large American cars in terms of design and model.

When the market dipped in the early 1950s, they found business in the Belgian Congo and shipped to Leopoldville (there’s always a season fans like to forget), later leveraging this to expand elsewhere in Africa: Nigeria, Angola, Tunisia and especially Algeria.

Next came a partnership with Fiat, then the start of manufacturing industrial vehicles, then a deal with CIÉ in Ireland, with some exports to the UK. The British were fond enough of the Belgian buses that they awarded them ‘Coach of the Year’

Beyond their beautiful coaches, Van Hool tackled public transport and industrial vehicles, too. They garnered admiration from the sort of professionals and experts that could delineate a liftgate and a slack adjuster, a genset and a gearbox, a kingpin from a coupler.

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 49

five times in the British Coach Rally’s ‘Concours d'Elegance’. Van Hool won over audiences in the Japanese market in the 1980s with double-decker buses via Meitetsu Group, then expanded back home in the 1990s by purchasing LAG Manufacturing in Bree, Belgium. By the mid-70s, their industrial vehicles were being sold in outlets from Europe to the Middle East, with high ratings in Asia and Africa, to boot.

Bernard himself was behind the figurative wheel at all times, shaping the company’s range of offerings around his own demands and even opening a welding school to ensure he’d have enough skilled workers to meet needs. But as business boomed despite multiple season-finale-worthy recessions, all was far from well within the growing Van Hool family empire.

Inheritance squabble

Van Hool’s industrial heritage, its famous name, its international reach, the fact that they were really a player in the market internationally – there's always an investor for that.

The family drama centres around the daughters, Ingrid and Simone, who’d been kept out of the shareholding right up until Bernard died unexpectedly while visiting a building fair in Brussels in 1974.

When the sisters saw that three of their eight brothers were being bought out of the company years later, the family feud spilled into the courts.

The daughters secured a favourable ruling on their share of the inheritance, but this particular plotline was far from over.

As the company’s ranks swelled and the family dispute only further festered, 4,000 workers (with around 2,500 of those employees in Belgium) became potential collateral damage to infighting and legal battles – their jobs tied to family-run branches where said-family weren’t on speaking terms with one another.

Yet work went on and Van Hool secured a minority stake in ABC Bus Companies, further opening the door to the North American market and dazzling a new continent with luxury coaches.

Trade journalists there dubbed Van Hool’s A330 Bus of the Year in 2003, and Americans swooned over their debut of the world’s most advanced hydrogen-powered bus in 2005. The company celebrated anniversaries and milestones, while the family behind it continued to bicker bitterly.

Then, COVID. And while still struggling to

Left: Aerial view of the Van Hool plant in Lier. Right: Luxury interior

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recover (the pandemic hit them a bit harder, perhaps, given their background in touristic coaches), disaster.

“Van Hool does not manage enough parts such as batteries to be competitive,” industry publication PVMagazine wrote at the start of this year. As a result, it lost a big contract at Flemish public transit company De Lijn.”

Lost contracts spelling doom are a manufacturing tale as old as time, perfect for a series finale. But even after a bankruptcy proceeding messier than a Rupert Murdoch divorce, there were still some companies interested in extending a hand and a lifeline to renew the show.

“Van Hool’s industrial heritage, its famous name, its international reach, the fact that they were really a player in the market internationally – there's always an investor for that,” says Piet Depuydt, a business journalist who followed the Van Hool story for 13 years.

“But if you’ve got a family dispute, with shares being held in custody as a result, a scenario wherein an external partner would invest in the company itself and become a shareholder who can profit in the future, is excluded.”

Depuydt, now with De Tijd, says the family dispute put off external partners from investing in the company. “That dispute hasn’t been able to be resolved in more than 25 years. That poses a big problem if you come into a situation where you need new or additional capital from external partners,” he says.

VDL Groep acquisition Willing to take on the challenge was VDL Groep.

The van der Leegtes behind VDL (its name an homage to their own) were no strangers to the Van Hools. Pieter van der Leegte founded his Dutch company across the border around the same time Bernard Van Hool founded his and entered the bus market in the 1990s when the company was under the care of his son, Wim. Wim and Bernard frequented the same trade fairs and industry events. They were competitors, but friendlier with one another than the Van Hools ever seem to be with each other.

In 2014, Willem van der Leegte (Pieter’s grandson) visited a Van Hool factory in Macedonia

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Left: The EX model at Heysel. Right: The Exqui.city18 hydrogen fuel cell model

While the contract with De Lijn was important, it wasn’t profitable. One expert even put the loss at €100,000 per bus delivered.

But Van Hool sought a place in the city bus market segment to show it was still a player.

upon the invitation of Filip Van Hool (Bernard’s son). There was mutual respect, admiration even.

“Van Hool is Belgian cultural heritage,” VDL Groep’s Miel Timmers explains. VDL Groep purchased parts of Van Hool after the company filed for bankruptcy in April of this year, rescuing some 1,600 jobs with the stroke of a pen and keeping the doors of the historic Koningshooikt plant (located just outside of Lier) open for around 250 workers.

Those parts include all intellectual property, design rights, software, product names, equipment and machines from Van Hool, but none of the warranty obligations for pre-agreement sales, which evaporated in the bankruptcy procedure.

However, VDL Groep did not bring in capital or even ally with the company itself. It effectively invested by buying several separate parts of Van Hool, a strategic move in terms of brand and identity. “They’re two family-owned businesses – they speak the same language,” Timmers says.

Indeed, while coaches represent just one part of the massive VDL Groep, it was the bus arm that Willem van der Leegte worked in before becoming CEO: “He was confronted by them as a competitor on a daily basis, he knows the brand well,” Timmers says.

An unlevel playing field For the automotive industry, the pandemic is far from over. The supply chain disruptions, the radical demand shift, a battered tourism sector – these are all still pain points. It hardly feels the right time to introduce a new, disruptive character to this show, but China won’t wait in the wings.

“The Chinese learn fast,” Timmers explains.

“The knowledge and quality gap is narrowing rapidly, and because of the lack of a level playing field, we’re not playing the game by the same rules.” Put simply: “We can’t sell buses in China.

But they can, for free, bring their buses to Europe. That development always comes with a loss of employment in Europe.”

The De Lijn contract that Van Hool lost went to BYD Auto, a Chinese multinational manufacturing company whose offer came in 20% cheaper than every European bus maker competing for the order. With China knocking off a fifth of the price, none of the European competitors stood a chance and soon

52 | THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE

Flemish residents will be shuttled around their cities on Chinese buses.

While the contract with De Lijn was important, it wasn’t profitable. One expert even put the loss at €100,000 per bus delivered.

Van Hool sought a place in the city bus market segment to show it was still a player – so losing the bid to BYD was more a reputational than profit problem.

VDL Van Hool is now selling its coaches in North America, where the market seems promising and the ABC deal offers opportunities. But if a Belgian bus company’s lights are kept on by a Dutch caretaker so that they can manufacture predominantly in Macedonia and then export to North America…is it still Belgian cultural heritage?

And if it once was, why wasn’t it protected?

The question may seem moot given the economic onslaught from Chinese competitors, challenging Europe’s established vehicle manufacturing industries on cost, and increasingly on technology. They cannot compete on cost, especially those who manufacture in western Europe, so survivors tend to find viable niches serving higher-end markets.

Van Hool knows this storyline well. To compete with Chinese tenders, they had to lower their margins. But they sunk so low that their offer wasn’t profitable any more – and when the bankruptcy crisis manager came in, their first decision was to cut all the tenders with city buses.

So, what is in their future? North America, with Silicon Valley companies’ love of luxury coaches could be a solution - so long as China keeps out, that is, and American tastes don’t shift, or economic downturns don’t hit discretionary spending.

But it still leaves a hole in Belgian industry.

Van Hool was the only automobile company left, and now they have all but left the scene.

And while the Koningshooikt plant may keep going, the new owners have been clear that if it no longer proves to be necessary or profitable for them, they’ll leave.

Can what’s left of Van Hool – now VDL Van Hool – turn those needed profits? While the future is uncertain, it seems this drama has at least one more season left to try.

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Why Belgium’s new sex worker law has yet to change life on the street Decriminalisation of prostitution in Belgium promised more social rights for sex workers on paper.

However, it has yet to impact women working on the street, as Marie-Flore Pirmez reports

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elgium became the first European country to decriminalise sex work when its parliament approved a new sexual penal code on March 18, 2022, a bold political choice aimed at reducing stigma and giving sex workers access to social rights and employment law.

However, for sex workers themselves, life remains largely unchanged. Despite decriminalisation, many still face significant risks, including violence and limited access to healthcare – reflecting a gap between legal reforms and the realities of life on the street.

“It’s been what, two years now?” says Deedee.

The 50-something trans, red-haired sex worker waits for clients on her porch on Rue Linné, in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, one of the few streets in Brussels' prostitution district.

Deedee’s voice has cheerful tone when calling out a man walking past her window shop; she is a familiar face in the neighbourhood. But she notes that decriminalising prostitution in Belgium has failed to lift sex workers out of their precarious situation. Access to social protections remains hindered by discrimination.

“I’m not too pessimistic about decriminalisation as I'm nearing the end of my career,” she says smilingly. “But I’m concerned for the next ones.

For all the migrant sex workers around here. I’m not expecting tremendous changes for them, unfortunately.”

She is echoed by Marie Lesperance, a 67-yearold Liège-born woman who started sex work 36 years ago. “Since the so-called decriminalisation, I haven’t noticed many changes, nor have my peers,” Lesperance laments.

After working as a factory worker, a waitress in a brasserie and a precious metals dealer, she eventually lost her job and ended up in the Brussels prostitution industry, selling her sex services in a window shop in the Rue D’Aerschot.

Now retired from prostitution, Lesperance remains active as a sex workers' rights advocate and is still close to her former peers. “Everyone turns to prostitution for money reasons. Don’t kid yourself,” she says. “They say you can now advertise your business or rent a shop window for

prostitution. But we’ve always been able to do so.

It’s now legal to open a bank account, but bankers still turn sex workers down without providing any reason.”

From tolerance to recognition The sexual penal law reform revised or introduced several concepts such as consent, incest and rape. Media headlines mostly drew attention to the decriminalisation of prostitution as it ended decades of blurry tolerance policy with a regulatory framework.

Before the reform, it was not illegal per se to offer or pay for sexual services in Belgium. But third parties – namely all those who make prostitution possible, like bar owners, landlords, accountants and drivers – risked being criminalised, which condemned the entire sector to illegality, (even if red-light districts have long been part of most big Belgian cities).

The legal database Strada lex says the new law has not resulted in a true decriminalisation.

Critics of the law, such as the Brussels-based sex workers association isala, say it has instead decriminalised third parties. In turn, this has led to a decriminalisation of pimping.

“The previous system was hypocritical, and it denied sex workers fundamental rights while opening the door to exploitation,” says Daan Bauwens, head of Utsopi, the Belgian union of sex workers. “We’ve never said and will never state that sex work is just like any other job. But it needs to be considered as work to give sufficient protection to the people working in this sector.”

The sex workers union has its headquarters on the Rue d’Aerschot, in the heart of the Brussels red-light district. Utsopi and other grassroots organisations such as Espace P have teams of social workers operating in Brussels and in major Walloon and Flemish cities, offering counselling, legal aid and health products to sex workers.

Espace P coordinator Isabelle Jaramillo says that decriminalisation is a major step towards the recognition of sex workers’ rights: “Third parties are no longer considered as pimps as long as no

It’s now legal to open a bank account, but bankers still turn sex workers down without providing any reason.

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unreasonable profits are made,” Jaramillo says – although she adds that this concept has yet to be defined by case law. “Another huge step with this reform relates to advertising. It remains prohibited except in the cases provided by law. Meaning that window prostitution as well as sex work promotion taking place online can be maintained.”

Human trafficking

Top: Deedee, in her window.

Above: Marie Lesperance

We’ve never said and will never state that sex work is just like any other job. But it needs to be considered as work to give sufficient protection to the people working in this sector.

Both Espace P and Utsopi believe the reform could expand the online sex work market. “But decriminalising online promotion of prostitution also plays a crucial role in combating human trafficking,” says Utsopi’s Bauwens. “It’s an essential tool for authorities to uncover cases of abuse on the ground.”

Quartier Rouge, one of the most popular sex work platforms in Belgium, say they have not yet seen a rise in the number of online platforms.

They know of 54 websites targeting the Belgian market and are already collaborating with the police. But a pending Royal Decree is expected to provide additional protection for sex workers and clients.

Among other requirements, the decree should mandate websites to monitor each advertisement, report potential human trafficking or child prostitution, and implement tools to alert sex workers about problematic clients and provide information about support organisations in Belgium.

The decriminalisation has been followed by other key legal measures. In May 2024, the Belgian parliament approved the labour law for sex workers under contract. Self-employed sex work was already possible in the country, albeit under a cover profession, but sex workers will now also be able to work under an employment contract. That means access to social security: pension, unemployment benefits, health insurance, maternity leave and so on. The law also protects sex workers against job-related risks by guaranteeing them rights such as the right to refuse a client or a sexual act.

However, for all the progressive intent of these measures, the impact has not yet being felt on the street.

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“We’ve been promised greater protections, but little has been done to help the women who want to get out of prostitution. Because some of them want to,” says Marie Lesperance. “This whole decriminalisation will only help a minority of sex workers.” By that, she means those who can afford to pay taxes or want to officially declare themselves as sex workers. Most simply cannot.

There are no official figures regarding prostitutes in Belgium, but Espace P says most are migrant women working illegally and waiting for a visa. In the streets near Rue d’Aerschot, curtains quickly close when I ask sex workers their opinion on decriminalisation. Many other are unaware of the changes.

Nancy from Nigeria eventually agrees to answer a few questions on the doorstep of the ground-floor apartment she rents in Saint-Josse.

“I now have the papers to work here, but that’s not the case for many of the girls here,” she says.

“And even with the papers, I can’t afford to pay taxes. I need to pay the rent here. It costs me about €450 per week. But I also have to pay the rent for my own flat. Do you know how much I earn per client? €25. Imagine how many tricks I’d need to get each day just to declare my income.”

Not a cure-all The sex work sector covers so many different areas: window prostitution, brothels, escorting, virtual sex, and sexual assistance for adults with disability. For some, sex work is the main source of income, while others with jobs find occasional prostitution a way of overcoming financial hardship.

Léa identifies herself as part of the privileged minority of sex workers. The 25-year-old French woman settled in Brussels last year and started providing sex services simultaneously, mainly online, because of financial hardship. She doesn't want to use the benefits of the new official work status. “I don't want to deal with a lot of red tape if I stop in a few months,” she says.

“And I don't want to register because it's an activity where I've chosen to break free from the traditional workplace. I choose when I work, I don't have to report to anyone, I do whatever I want with my money.” Léa also wants to remain anonymous. “Even though I know there are tricks to maintain that,” she adds.

Aifi also turned to prostitution in Brussels to support her life as an art student. “It’s a law that won’t benefit those who need it most: it doesn’t apply to students, temporary workers nor to flexi-jobbers,” she says.

Associations admit that decriminalisation and legal work status will not resolve all the issues faced by most sex workers – even if it is a strong symbolic win at this stage. Utsopi insists that the framework will at least make it possible to provide social security to those working in bars and nightclubs.

Guilhem Lautrec, who heads Alias, an organisation supporting men and trans people in pros-

titution, warns that little has changed. “Decriminalisation can be seen as a risk reduction policy,” he says. “It hasn’t immediately stopped the violence that sex workers still face. However, sex work is no longer a legal risk, which benefits all sex workers. Including undocumented workers, or those who don't want to declare themselves.”

Lautrec also noted some side effects of the decriminalisation. Alias received an increased number of requests from hospitals, psychologists or even community centres seeking advice on how best to support sex workers who come to them. “They’ve been asking for training, which was previously provided but mainly to the police,” he adds. “I wonder if we’d have seen this level of interest without decriminalising sex work.”

Local politics In Brussels, prostitution is mainly spread across four communes: the central city of Brussels, Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, Schaerbeek, as well as a small patch of Avenue Louise cutting through Ixelles. Decriminalisation did not prevent communes from regulating prostitution on their territory - or even banning it.

Researchers from the University of Mons, KULeuven and the University of Liège have analysed the first impacts of Belgian decriminalisation as part of an ongoing study. They highlight the lack of coordination between the distinct levels of governance. “Typically Belgian,” says sociologist Renaud Maes who collaborated in the study. “But the tangible consequence is that a federal law can be undermined by local policy.”

This has created perplexing responses. In Brussels, the same police district spans both Saint-Josse and Schaerbeek, two neighbouring municipalities. While Schaerbeek allows prostitution within a regulated framework, Saint-Josse launched strict crackdowns on it. This means that police officers walking between communes need to apply different approaches when dealing with prostitution. “This obviously creates significant confusion and greatly increases the risk of arbitrariness,” Maes says.

Some communes had more repressive practices, especially in the run-up to local elections in October.

Saint-Josse’s recently re-elected mayor Emir Kir has long taken a strict stance on prostitution, but opposition council member Pascal Lemaire (Ecolo) says his measures have failed. “Kir issued several variants of local regulations, including a tax for landlords renting out their ground floors to prostitutes in the 2000s. This hasn’t helped to curb the surge in rents in the district,” Lemaire says.

Renting prices can be as high as €1,000 per week for a window ground-floor sometimes in pitiful condition. A 2012 study from Inter-Environnement Bruxelles (IEA) confirms that although most rentals for prostitution are private leases, their prices come close to commercial leases.

The Saint-Josse regulations have been overturned several times by the Council of State,

but Kir recently announced plans to buy up the shop windows – to then convert them into social housing. “Well, that's just on paper,” Lemaire says. “Few of these projects have gotten off the ground.”

According to Utsopi, since the decriminalisation, municipal bylaws cannot outright ban prostitution anymore. “The question now is how to get rid of these illegal local regulations,” says Utsopi’s Daan Bauwens. “It also forces sex workers into severe insecurity as they are pushed toward street prostitution. Communes must understand the limits of their authority over prostitution.”

In response to these challenges, the Brussels-Capital Region agreed to implement an integrated approach to sex work in June 2023.

This initiative aims to create a unified policy across the region, replacing the current fragmented municipality-based rules. However, as of today, the proposed consultation platform to develop this approach has yet to materialise. This slow progress seems to reflect the ongoing challenges in balancing local authority, sex workers' rights, and regional policy in the wake of decriminalisation.

My rent here costs about €450 per week. But I also have to pay the rent for my own flat. Do you know how much I earn per client? €25.

Imagine how many tricks I’d need to get each day just to declare my income.

Top: Window in Rue D’Aerschot. Above: On the streets

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The police unit helping the homeless How does a city manage an exploding homelessness crisis without resorting to brutal tactics? Ciara Carolan went on patrol with Team Herscham, a pioneering police unit treating the homeless as human beings rather than eyesores to be moved along

C

hris Vandenhaute knows everyone.

As we weave through Brussels city centre together, he has a smile and a wave for almost everyone we encounter on the streets, be it a fellow police officer, a business owner or even, crucially, a homeless person.

On the cusp of 50, Vandenhaute has been a policeman for 25 years – exactly half his life. He now dedicates his work to assisting the city’s homeless population, a cohort that most would prefer to ignore. He leads Team Herscham, a police unit that provides an administrative path out of homelessness for those who have fallen through the cracks.

“We go into those cracks,” he says.

On a bright autumn morning, I accompany Vandenhaute on his daily pilgrimage around Brussels city centre. We leave his office next to the Parc Royal, cut through Mont des Arts towards Central Station, go out the other side to eventually pass Bourse, swing

by Place Saint Catherine, walk up to Le Petit Chateau next to the canal and circle all the way back around.

“The police are seen as a symbol of authority and oppression,” he tells me as we walk.

“We try to be the other side of that.”

You don’t exist if you can’t prove who you are Team Herscham’s office is true to police stereotypes, with a masculine environment that includes large portraits of fishing trips on the walls, empty energy drinks lined up on a desk and slogans like ‘you deserve a beer!’ making up the decor. But its focus on non-judgement sets Herscham apart from

run-ins its clientele may have had with the police in the past.

The project was founded by officer Nico Lauwers in November 2003. The name alludes to the god of beggars and people excluded from society in the popular video game Warhammer.

After seeing police interactions with homeless people in metro stations, Lauwers wanted to create a unit that would invest in the individual rather than move them along, pivoting away from a prejudiced view of homelessness and fostering a compassionate one instead.

The team is made up of just five officers whose aim is to provide documentation to homeless people. Without an official address, they are cut off from the mainstream. No address, no state support. No ID card. No access to legal employment. No official existence, and no way out of poverty.

“In today's society, you don't exist if you can't prove who you are,” a Herscham booklet explains. “Nobody notices that human beings become virtually invisible without the necessary documentation.”

If someone loses their ID card, all they need to do is go to their commune and apply for a new one. This is not possible without a registered address. Herscham identified this gap in 2003 and created a document called an ‘attestation de passage’, which allows homeless people to go to CPAS in the City of Brussels and apply for a ‘reference address’. This makes them eligible for work contracts and unemploy-

Nobody notices that human beings become virtually invisible without the necessary documentation.

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the dog doing?”

Team Herscham positions itself as a low-profile police unit, so its members forgo the uniform (although they carry guns). The patrol seems like social work on the surface but there are reminders that Vandenhaute is an agent of the law before anything else.

Two men sleeping on the steps of Beurscafe are prodded awake without much ceremony.

“Get up, it’s almost midday,” the officer declares.

“The city has to be pleasant for everyone,” he explains to me afterwards. “The café is opening soon, and I am not afraid to be firm with them.”

Nobody plans on being homeless

Top (and page 48): Chris Vandenhaute on patrol. Above: King Philippe visiting the Herscham offices

We are like a spider in the middle of the social cobweb.

ment benefits, therefore providing an income that might eventually lead to a roof over their head.

Low-profile policing For this to work, the target group needs to know that Herscham exists. The team does the rounds seven days a week and has spent years cultivating bonds of trust with the city’s homeless. Documentation may be the main mission but Herscham provides general support too: a blanket, a cup of coffee, a trip to the doctor, a trustworthy official to confide in…

The team normally works in pairs, but I am Vandenhaute’s partner today. We stride through the city centre, stopping to chat with every homeless person we meet. “Ça va?” says Vandenhaute, fist-bumping a group of men sitting in a loose circle in a grassy park, asking questions like “How did it go at the meeting last week?” and “How is

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Brussels’ homeless population has ballooned in the last decade. There were between 3,000 and 3,500 in this category ten years ago, but the figure rose to between 9,000 and 10,000 in 2024.

Vandenhaute estimates that a fifth of Herscham’s target group are Belgian citizens legally entitled to be here. Two-fifths are EU citizens without an address that permits them to work, while another two-fifths are people without documentation who have migrated from third countries.

Administrative support is only useful to individuals with a legal right to live and work in Belgium. The federal reception agency Fedasil is responsible for the fate of undocumented migrants, but Herscham strives to assist anyone who has ended up homeless.

“We are here for everyone on the street, no exceptions,” Vandenhaute says. “When you're a kid, you might dream of becoming a fireman, a policeman, a journalist, a doctor.

Nobody plans on being homeless when they grow up.”

When we get to Le Petit Chateau, the asylum reception centre next to the canal, we descend to the waterfront where several men from Afghanistan are lying on tattered pieces of fabric under the bridge.

“They are coming to clear your stuff tomorrow,” Vandenhaute tells them. “You shouldn’t be sleeping here. It’s only a matter of time until one of you falls in.”

“We have nowhere else to go,” they respond.

After patrol, we drive to Pacheco, near the Botanique metro, where hundreds of single men on the waiting list for asylum were decamped from Le Petit Chateau when locals took issue with the spread of tents along the canal. The problem was moved out of sight to this commercial district where there are no residents, although they have since been displaced again to a temporary location on Rue Belliard.

Vandenhaute says he expects the global

Prevention is better than cure

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crises driving migration will worsen in the coming years: war in the Middle East, the harrowing effects of climate change in poorer countries and natural disasters. The current migration to Europe is “the tip of the iceberg”, he says, and the structures in place to assist these people urgently need to be reinforced.

Keeping it local

Brussels’ homeless population has ballooned in the last decade. There were between 3,000 and 3,500 in this category ten years ago, but the figure rose to between 9,000 and 10,000 in 2024.

Migration is an issue of global proportions, but initiatives like Herscham are locally run by practical-minded people like Vandenhaute who refuse to be overwhelmed by the gravity of world events. Still, Herscham is unlikely to be expanded as its success lies in the fact that it is small, personable and highly localised.

“We are big enough,” Vandenhaute says.

“I want to preserve the feeling of a family.

The people on the street know the team. If we got bigger people wouldn’t know us anymore. Besides, if we got too big, we would start oppressing people without meaning to. Officers would get bored and fall into oppression.”

Cities like Namur, Mons and Ghent have been inspired to create similar initiatives.

Vandenhaute also regularly provides training in the police college with a view to augmenting empathy across the board. On top of this, he is training 30 new STIB/MIVB employees tasked specifically with caring for homeless people sheltering in metro stations, and he will fly to Canada later this month to teach local police forces about his work.

The unit collaborates regularly with the non-profit sector. There are a plethora of organisations providing a long list of services

Under the bridge at the Gare du Midi

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for homeless people: accommodation, hot meals, showers, activities, drug consumption rooms, mental health support and more.

Herscham is the only official on-theground presence responsible for the city’s most vulnerable in this way. It therefore acts as a gateway between the state response, charities and the people they exist to serve.

This has many advantages. In October, after a homeless man stabbed another to death, Vandenhaute saw the CCTV footage and identified a witness, eventually helping to bring the perpetrator to justice.

He also acts on tips from his network on the street. One man begging near Central Station told him a story doing circulating about a homeless person who bragged that he had stolen a gun from a police officer.

Vandenhaute made a few calls and verified that the rumour was just that, a rumour.

These human links allow the entire support system to work more efficiently in the interest of public safety and personal well-being.

“We are like a spider in the middle of the social cobweb,” Vandenhaute says. “There will always be people who have fallen by the wayside. But you must also respect the people who live and work in Brussels. There has to be a balance.”

This engagement is a vital element of his work and helps ensure that the police are part of the solution. “We are like the glue of the community because we have built up a relationship with these people and if we ask them to do something for us, such as move away from a shop entrance, they will do it.

And if they ask us for something, we will try our best to help,” he says.

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PROMOTED CONTENT

Going beyond economic growth: Europe’s role in building a just economy for the common good

G Jean Emmanuel Sem, worker at Bozoum, Central African Republic. © Jiri Pasz/Caritas

Caritas Kabwe's food security project, Zambia. © SCIAF (Caritas Scotland)

rowth and competitiveness seem to be the buzzwords of the year inside the EU bubble. European countries are belatedly trying to catch up with some of the fastest growing economies in the world.

For nearly a century, the economic measurement of progress has been –and still is – GDP. While it supposedly measures everything – the total production of the economy – there are still many areas of our economy which it leaves out.

From Caritas Europa's perspective, the EU's almost exclusive focus on GDP growth often comes at the cost of the wellbeing of people and the environment.

Constructively bucking the trend, Caritas Europa's latest publication, “Going beyond economic growth: Europe’s role in building a just economy for the common good”, explains some of the myths and false premises underlying the EU’s green growth policies (contained in the EU’s Green Deal) and the new international partnerships proposed under the Global Gateway.

It also elaborates, from the experiences of Caritas organisations in Europe, Africa and Latin America, on how these policies and partnerships perpetuate harmful, outdated models of growth that fail to promote care for people and the environment. But Caritas Europa also offers recommendations for the reform of the global economy, building upon already existing practical solutions. These are not utopian ideas, on

Gold mining in Rio Atrato, Colombia. © Steve Cagan/SCIAF

64 | THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE

the contrary, they show that continuing to rely on an economic model that is incompatible with planetary boundaries is bound to fail.

Overshooting planetary boundaries Several scientific assessments confirm that the current global model of resource use to deliver economic growth is driving an unprecedented triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. Europe is no exception. The EU's material footprint – the total amount of fossil fuels, biomass, metals and minerals it consumes – is currently an alarming 14.8 tonnes per capita annually, more than double what is deemed sustainable and just.

Economic growth does not prevent poverty At the same time, contrary to popular belief, more economic growth does not necessarily lead to more social progress and an improved welfare state. For decades we have been following the same, tired recipe: grow the economy first, then use the wealth to combat poverty. But the idea that increasing production will lead to the needs of all members of society gradually being met is simply

Participant of the "Food Security and Resilience in the Lake region” Caritas project, Kaya village, Chad. © Michael Stulman/Catholic Relief Services (Caritas U.S.)

untrue. When it comes to income, according to UN data, in 2022, 9% of the world's population was living in extreme poverty and, according to the World Bank, in 2023, 45.6% of the world lived on less than $6.85 per day.

In his foreword for Caritas Europa's publication, Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur for Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, states “placing all our hopes into achieving an increase of the GDP, as a precondition for everything else, betrays a worrying failure of political imagination.”

Does the European vision for “green growth” offer any solutions?

Over the last few years, EU policymakers have increased the use of the term “green growth” to make growth sound more sustainable, despite the overwhelming evidence of the failures and dangers of following the logic of endless economic growth.

One example of this is the rush to open new mining projects in countries where reported human rights violations relate to the mining of minerals for renewable energy, all for the purpose of the “energy transition” in Europe. In its new publication, Caritas Europa has looked at some cases in Rwanda, Zambia, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina. Through the collaboration with Caritas staff in those countries, they explain how multinationals working for the “green transition economy” are in fact replicating the destructive model of the fossil fuels industry when it comes to human rights violations and environmental degradation standards.

Current system abuses living beings The truth is that, within our current system, too often the economy can only thrive if and when we exploit living beings.

The quest for growth leads policymakers to promote initiatives that maximise efficiency gains and monetary value. Despite politicians having a responsibility to ensure a democratic, socially just society, there is a distressing lack of long-term strategic thinking by EU leaders, who are sacrificing important principles for marginal, short-term gains. Promoting a just economy is a massive investment in our future.

Where there is a need, there is a Caritas

A homeless person in Bordeaux. © Sébastien Le Clézio/Secours Catholique-Caritas France

level, based on the principles of equity and justice, would be a further key step. Another would be to invest in social protection and social services in Europe and in partner countries to ensure that everyone has access to the essentials of life such as housing and a decent income.

Europe must also acknowledge its historical responsibility for climate change and fulfil its commitments on decarbonisation and climate financing to support low and medium income countries. We must always remember that globally the richest 1% of the world, the “polluter elite”, is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%.

Finally, EU leaders cannot ignore the growing movement of CSOs, academic experts, scientists and others insisting that our current economic measures don’t pursue the wellbeing of our societies now and in the future. What kind of world do we want to live in and leave behind for those who come after us?

It is never too late to act for a fairer society and for a just economy.

Find out about Caritas Europa's new report at: https://www.caritas.eu/going-beyond-economic-growth/

Who they are The Catholic Caritas confederation, with over 160 national members, is the 2nd largest humanitarian actor in the world. Caritas Europa is the European arm of the confederation.

They work with people of all faiths to end poverty and promote the dignity of all. They have a heartfelt commitment to fighting the injustices which lead to poverty and the exclusion of people in the most marginalised and vulnerable situations.

Coordination With a well-established grassroots presence, Caritas Europa coordinates the network's responses to emergencies in Europe and supports member organisations in preparedness and risk reduction. All their work is guided by a high level of safeguarding of children and adults in vulnerable situations.

Advocacy Their advocacy work focuses on social policies, migration and asylum policies, humanitarian action and international cooperation.

What can Europe do?

To transform Europe’s growth-driven and unequal economy into a just one, there are many solutions. One example would be to initiate a serious plan, with binding targets, for the reduction of energy and resource consumption in Europe. Supporting the reform of the global taxation architecture at UN

The job guarantee project in Nievre, France. The project offers a permanent contract to all long-term unemployed people, serving useful and non-competing activities, and develops market gardening, recycling and motor farming activities. © Christophe Hargoues/Secours Catholique-Caritas France

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 65

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What six centuries of higher education say about Belgium Belgium’s oldest university was set up in Leuven in 1425, and next year its successor institutions will celebrate its 600th anniversary. As Philippe Van Parijs writes, the history of higher education in Belgium is also the history of battles between Catholics and liberals, and between Flemings and Francophones

P

ope Francis’s visit to Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve in September kicked off the celebrations during this academic year amongst students, professors and staff of KU Leuven and UCLouvain of what both institutions regard as their 600th anniversary.

But was it really their university that was founded in 1425?

It’s a question that forces us to scrutinise two of the most turbulent episodes in Belgium’s history.

Before doing so, a little quibble about the date of the celebration. In 1425, John IV, Duke of Brabant, decided to create a university in his duchy, as his nephew and (soon) successor Philip the Good had done in Dole (Burgundy) three years earlier. Brussels was the first location considered, but for fear of student riots, the local authorities declined. Leuven, however, was more receptive, and on December 9, 1425, Pope Martin V allowed the creation of a Studium Generale Lovaniense that would comprise three faculties: arts, law and medicine.

The activities of what was later commonly called Universitas Lovaniensis started the following year. In fact, 1426 was regarded as its birth year until the original of the papal bull was repatriated from a Dutch monastery in 1909. This should have made 2025-26 more appropriate than 2024-2025 for the celebration of six centuries.

But the impatience is understandable. Where academic institutions are concerned — not individual academics — old age is widely, though perhaps not so wisely, regarded as an indicator of excellence. Hence, the sooner an institution starts drawing public attention to how ancient it is, the better for its prestige.

All the more so because of the age difference with other nearby universities. Founded in 1575

by William of Orange (whose son was kidnapped on the orders of King Philip II of Spain while a

student in Leuven), the University of Leiden is 150 years younger. The age gap stretches to four centuries with the universities of Ghent and Liège founded in 1817 by King William I of the Netherlands, shortly after the start of his brief reign over Belgium.

Can KU Leuven and UCLouvain, however, really say that the Universitas Lovaniensis — the university of Erasmus, Vives, Justus Lipsius, Mercator, Vesalius, Jansenius and so many others — is their university? Didn’t the university founded in 1425 suffer a sudden death at the end of the 18th century?

In November 1792, the French revolutionary troops invaded the Austrian Netherlands, or southern Low Countries (roughly today’s Belgium, back then part of the Habsburg Empire). On October 17, 1797, France and Austria agreed in the Treaty of Campo Formio that this territory would henceforth be integrated in the newly-established French Republic.

A few days later, a decree of the Département de la Dyle abolished the Universitas Lovaniensis. Its rector, Jean-Joseph Havelange, was sentenced to forced labour in French Guiana, where he died in 1798.

The university’s equipment and library were transferred to a newly created Ecole Centrale de Bruxelles. In 1806, after the French Republic became an empire under Napoleon, it was renamed Université impériale de Bruxelles. It was housed in the (still standing) Palace of Charles de Lorraine, next to the Place Royale, at the top of the Mont des Arts.

The whole of Belgium’s higher education was then concentrated in Brussels. But this did not last long. Napoleon lost at Waterloo, and in 1815, the Treaty of Vienna reunified the Northern and Southern low countries under the Dutch King William I. The Université impériale de Bruxelles disappeared, and

Can KU Leuven and UCLouvain, really say that the Universitas Lovaniensis — the university of Erasmus, Vives, Justus Lipsius, Mercator, Vesalius, Jansenius and so many others — is their university?

Didn’t the university founded in 1425 suffer a sudden death at the end of the 18th century?

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Until the beginning of the 20th century, 1835 was regarded and celebrated as the university’s founding year. In the context of the chronic tensions between liberals and Catholics and with liberal governments in power most of the time, the celebrations served to express and strengthen the catholic pillar’s commitment to its university.

Since 1925, however, it is instead the founding of the Universitas Lovaniensis that has been celebrated every quarter century. A multi-secular continuity was thereby asserted, while the four chaotic decades between the abrupt abolition in 1797 and the miraculous Catholic reoccupation in 1835 were bracketed out as an ephemeral aberration.

Yet a close look at what happened in those four decades provides some support to the view that the Louvanistes are cheating when claiming that their university is six centuries old. Stricto sensu, they may be willing to concede, it is not older than the Université libre de Belgique and barely older than the Université libre de Bruxelles.

Walloons, go home!

Top left: John IV, Duke of Brabant, creator of the university. Top right: University Hall.

Above: The founding charter. Page 62: The university library

The strong, sometimes violent tensions to which this led are still associated today with the slogans the students used: “Leuven Vlaams” and “Walen buiten” (“Flemish Leuven”, “Walloons out”).

three state universities were created in 1817: in Ghent and Liège, but also in Leuven, using the old buildings abandoned 25 years earlier.

Université libre versus Université catholique This trio of state universities did not last long, either. In 1830, Belgium declared its independence from the Netherlands and in 1831 adopted a liberal constitution that granted, among other fundamental liberties, a liberté d’enseignement that permitted the creation of private universities.

In 1834, freemasons used that freedom to found the Université libre de Belgique. It was initially housed in the Palace of Charles de Lorraine and from 1842 — the year it changed its name to Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) — in the Palais Granvelle, next to the cathedral, built in the 16th century as the residence of the first archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels.

In the same year, the Catholic bishops founded the Université catholique de Belgique in Mechelen, the official seat of the archdiocese since the 16th century. One year later, the newly created Catholic university moved from Mechelen to Leuven, appropriated the old buildings of Leuven’s ephemeral state university and renamed itself Université catholique de Louvain (UCL).

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There is, however, a second turbulent episode that undermines the continuity claim at least as much as the first one. It is not about an interruption, but about a scission. It is not about the conflict between liberals and Catholics, but about the conflict between French and Dutch-speakers.

The Universitas Lovaniensis operated mainly in Latin until the end of the 18th century, when the French revolutionaries shut it down.

The Université catholique de Louvain, created in 1835, operated in French from the start. At first, French dominance did not give rise to any more problems than did the earlier dominance of Latin.

But access to higher education spread and the Flemish emancipatory movement grew stronger. From 1911 onwards, some courses were given in Dutch, and from 1930 onwards, most study programmes were offered in both Dutch and French by the (by then) officially bilingual UCL-KUL. In the 1960s, the fast-growing student population combined with fears that the university’s expanding francophone section would irreversibly swell the francophone “oil stain” between Leuven and Brussels. It became increasingly problematic to host Belgium’s largest francophone university in the Flemish town of Leuven.

The strong, sometimes violent tensions to which this led are still associated today with the slogans the students used: “Leuven Vlaams” and “Walen buiten” (‘Flemish Leuven’, ‘Walloons out’).

In 1968, these tensions brought down the national government and sowed the seeds of the subsequent splitting of all national parties.

Above all, they precipitated the decision to transfer the francophone section to what was to be called Louvain-la-Neuve, literally ‘New Leuven’, a completely new town to be built 30km to the

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Top: The Palace de Charles de Lorraine, seat of the Université impériale de Bruxelles (1806-1815) and of the Université libre de Belgique (1834-1842). Above: Police fighting with protesting Flemish students in the 1960s

Thanks to an unlikely sequence of events, the two universities are even set to share the same site again – not in Leuven but in the centre of Brussels.

south, on the other side of the language border.

In 1970, the university split was officialised and two distinct institutions were created: the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (since 2011 KU Leuven) and the Université catholique de Louvain (since 2017 UCLouvain). Of the university (re)created in Leuven in 1835, the former kept the (Flemish) location and the latter the (French) name.

In the same year, similar pressure led the University of Brussels to cleave along language lines, but without requiring a similarly traumatic 30km move, with the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) becoming distinct institutions just a few hundred metres apart.

Back together in Brussels?

The move to Louvain-la-Neuve, initially strongly resisted and then bitterly resented by most of the francophone professors (not the students) occurred at a fast pace between 1972 and 1978. Among many other things, it meant dividing up the university library’s collections, with most works just divided by shelf mark: odd numbers stayed in Leuven, even numbers left for Louvain-la-Neuve (or the other way around). Given that books were exchangeable after the initial allocation, this was not the pinnacle of absurdity – as some claimed – but a simple way of making a regrettable split at the same time as fair and as efficient as possible.

More importantly, several intelligent choices were made when designing Louvain-la-Neuve.

Before anything else, a railway link was built,

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with the university’s rectorate on top of the station, and the new, pedestrian town was inspired by medieval European towns rather than by 20th-century American campuses. So, against the odds, Louvain-la-Neuve proved an academic success, as well as an invaluable economic asset for the Walloon region.

It took a while for the relations between the sister universities to thaw, but they are now better than they have ever been since the split and there are countless collaborations. These are helped by the fact that the two universities compete neither for students (they attract them from two linguistically distinct recruitment pools) nor for subsidies (they are funded by two distinct autonomous governments) — and by the fact that both now operate bilingually, with English (today’s Latin) added to their official language.

And thanks to an unlikely sequence of events, the two universities are even set to share the same site again – not in Leuven but in the centre of Brussels.

When the Université catholique de Belgique left Mechelen for Leuven in 1835, the vacated building was used to create in 1838 an Ecole de commerce et d’industrie, which moved to Brussels in 1858 and took the name Institut Saint Louis. Out of this institute grew, in 1948, the Faculté universitaire Saint Louis (FUSL), renamed Université Saint Louis Bruxelles (USLB) in 2013. And out of this francophone institution grew in turn, in 1973, the Universitaire Faculteiten Sint Aloysius (UFSAL), renamed Katholieke Universiteit Brussel (KUB) in 1991. Both were independent institutions.

However, KU Leuven absorbed the KUB in 2013, and UCLouvain absorbed the USLB in 2023, thereby strengthening their respective presence in Brussels — already quite significant, given that UCLouvain’s medicine faculty was transferred from Leuven to the Brussels commune of Woluwe-Saint-Lambert in 1970.

In 2021, Belfius bank said it would sell a building on Boulevard du Jardin Botanique next to the USLB site, now part of UCLouvain – adding that it should be used for educational purposes. And who bought it? The KU Leuven. Fifty years after the last Francophones left the shared buildings in Leuven, both universities will soon be living cheek-to-cheek once again. One more reason, no doubt, for them to celebrate something together.

As explained above, whether this something can legitimately be the 600th anniversary of the creation of their university is open to debate. What can certainly be celebrated, however, is the 600th anniversary of the presence of higher education in what is now Belgium.

Higher education is arguably much more important for our regions today than it was in 1425. It is therefore something all of us in Belgian higher education and beyond should celebrate. Not only the Louvanistes.

Full disclosure: The author is professor emeritus at UCLouvain and special guest professor at KULeuven.

Bold Bright BJAB The British Junior Academy of Brussels Private primary & secondary education with year-round admission Rated ‘excellent’ by British Schools Overseas Visit bjab.org or call us at 02 732 53 76 to book a private tour THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 71 of our two city-centre locations in Etterbeek.

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A personalised path to success: How ISB offers a global education for every child

I No two students are the same, and we believe every child should have an individual learning pathway.

n Brussels, families have a range of excellent educational options, from the well-established Belgian public system to the offering of reputable private schools. Amid the competition, The International School of Brussels (ISB) is stepping to the front of the crowd, offering a new and distinct alternative to the norm.

Since its foundation, the school has dedicated itself to preparing students for an international future, becoming a leader in truly personalised learning. With a student body representing over 60 nationalities, ISB focuses on individual growth, global citizenship, and creating pathways that fit each student’s unique strengths and aspirations.

In an interview with The Brussels Times, James MacDonald, School Director, highlighted that while Belgian schools certainly offer a good education, ISB provides different opportunities, opening new and exciting pathways for locals and expat families alike. He emphasised that in local public systems “you won’t have the same level of personalised learning or the same extracurricular opportunities” as at ISB. Both systems have their merits, but MacDonald believes that the school’s impressive academic results and ever-expanding student body are testament to the success of this whole-school approach, which has been carefully crafted alongside international experts in education.

A new approach to education Some of the differences between ISB’s approach to learning and other systems can be perceived almost immediately. Walking through the school's impressive campus, occupying a commanding position in Brussels’ leafy Watermael-Boitsfort suburb, students can be seen eagerly rushing to their classes.

Some of their class materials feature topics otherwise unheard of in other Brussels schools, such as Japanese Literature, Creative Arts, or Microeconomics.

While the Belgian system generally follows a fixed curriculum, ISB offers a dynamic and flexible academic structure designed around each student's needs and interests. MacDonald explains that ISB’s philosophy centres on the

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fact that “no two students are the same, and we believe every child should have an individual learning pathway,” reflecting a core belief that education should adapt to the individual, not the other way around.

The school provides a wide array of academic programmes, such as the International Baccalaureate (IB), Advanced Placement (AP), BTEC, and US High School Diploma. This variety allows students to focus on subjects they are passionate about while remaining challenged at their own level.

For instance, a student drawn to STEM fields can immerse themselves in the school’s VEX Robotics programme, competing in international tournaments, while another might pursue advanced courses in digital media or visual arts.

Students can also receive education in their native language, with courses taught in everything from Swedish to Korean.

According to MacDonald, ISB "tailors the curriculum to ensure that every student feels challenged in the right way and at the appropriate level.” Some students might require extra support, while others may be ready to engage with more advanced material, and ISB's flexible structure allows for both.

While other schools’ educational programmes tend to focus on the majority of their student population, ISB’s flexible curriculum ensures that both students who need additional learning support, and high-ability students who need additional challenges, are valued equally and guided accordingly. The school tailors its education to navigate learning disabilities, just as it does to those who excel in the classroom.

No longer the ‘American school’ ISB has historically been perceived as a school for expatriate families, however, in recent years the school has seen increasing interest from local Belgian families. The public system in Belgium is widely respected, but ISB offers something different: an international outlook and the stepping stones needed to achieve greatness. This has proven appealing to families seeking a more global education for their children, without sacrificing their own linguistic or cultural ties.

ISB offers bilingual programmes that allow students to maintain strong connections to their local languages, such as French or Dutch, while also benefiting from instruction in English.

For families interested in global opportunities, ISB provides a unique balance between local linguistic skills and international educational opportunities. MacDonald notes that many Belgian parents appreciate the school’s bilingual options and its emphasis on global citizenship, which sets their children up for success in an increasingly interconnected world.

He remarks that some families value keeping their children in local schools to maintain cultural ties, but for those looking for a more international path, ISB strikes a balance with its global perspective and linguistic offerings.

Personalised learning in action Learning time at ISB looks a lot different than in many other schools. Students benefit from small class sizes, which allow teachers to develop close relationships with their pupils.

ISB wants their educators to act as mentors, guiding students in both academic and personal development. Rather than following a fixed academic journey, students at ISB can carve out a path that reflects their unique strengths and interests.

MacDonald highlighted how this approach creates a supportive environment where students feel encouraged to take on new challenges.

“Our student-teacher ratio means we get to know our students well,” he says. This enables ISB to provide individualised support, whether a student needs extra help or advanced coursework.

A prime example of this is the school’s "Pathways to Excellence" programme, which allows students to balance high-level training in sports, arts, and STEM subjects with their academic commitments. The programme tailors individual schedules for students training for competitions or performances, ensuring they can pursue their passions without falling behind academically. The school is proud to have produced both Oxbridge students and Olympians, and this pathway is an initiative to ensure that more students get opportunities to excel.

Beyond the classroom Another key feature of ISB’s personalised approach is its extensive extracurricular programme. ISB believes that learning shouldn’t stop at the classroom door. Students partake in a rich array of afterschool activities that enable students to develop skills and passions outside their academic subjects, from cheerleading and fencing to robotics and digital media. Often, the ISB campus is just as bustling after school hours as it is during the day.

“Some of the most important learning

happens outside the classroom,” MacDonald explained. ISB’s extracurricular activities, he said, are designed to nurture creativity, resilience, and leadership. For example, the Destination Imagination programme gives students the chance to work together on open-ended STEM challenges, fostering creativity and problem-solving skills that are essential for future success.

Through such programmes, ISB encourages its students to explore new interests, build confidence, and engage in teamwork, all of which are cornerstones of the ISB education.

Harnessing technologies Incorporating technology into the learning process is another way ISB personalises its offering. The school uses a digital platform to track student progress, allowing teachers to monitor academic performance in real time. This technology enables the staff to offer timely feedback and adjust their teaching strategies to meet each student's evolving needs.

“Technology isn’t just about devices in the classroom,” MacDonald explains. “It’s a tool that helps teachers understand student progress and support and challenge them as appropriate, providing a tailored educational experience that evolves as the student grows.”

Looking to the future, ISB is also exploring how artificial intelligence can further enhance personalised learning. AI tools have the potential to offer new ways of assessing students and providing individual feedback, ensuring that ISB remains at the forefront of educational innovation.

Equipping the students of tomorrow While the school’s director could easily brag of the school’s academic prowess, having placed 100 students last year in the world’s top universities across 15 countries, ISB believes that education is about more than exams and grades. It’s about preparing students to thrive in a rapidly changing world. The school’s focus on critical thinking, creativity, and global citizenship equips students with the tools they need to succeed, whether they stay in Belgium or pursue careers internationally.

For Brussels families, ISB provides a compelling alternative to the norm. The school offers flexibility, bilingual opportunities, and a globally focused curriculum that prepares students for life beyond the classroom.

After all, “We want our students to leave ISB with a strong sense of who they are and what they can achieve,” MacDonald concluded.

ISB’s flexible curriculum ensures that both students who need additional learning support, and high-ability students who need additional challenges, are valued equally and guided accordingly.

The Brussels Times

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 73

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The Louise Tower rises again More than six decades after its construction, the Louise Tower is back in the spotlight, having been stripped to its skeleton and reborn for the 21st century. While the Brussels traffic still snarls below on the Avenue Louise, the renovated icon promises energyefficient luxury and a nostalgic nod to its 1960s origins. As the city ponders its future, Frédéric Moreau wonders whether this architectural gem can offer a glimpse of renewal amid the urban grind

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 75

O Most recent overhauls of tall buildings in Brussels have hung the clothes of the 21st century on the discredited architecture of the postwar period, with smooth glass finishes or brighter colours.

ctober 1967. Roger Moore, six years away from playing James Bond, is in Brussels to promote The Saint TV series which made his name. He is being interviewed by the RTB public broadcaster at the wheel of Simon Templar’s Volvo P1800 coupé.

As they speed along Avenue Louise towards the Bois de la Cambre, the TV reporter is fishing for compliments about Belgium and its capital. “Vous aimez la ville?” – “It’s beautiful, beautiful, très beau.” – “Are there countries you particularly like?” – “I like quiet countries!” Moore yells over the roar of the Volvo (this is mistranslated in the subtitles as ‘I like wild countries’).

The car slips underground and his face in profile becomes a silhouette. Moore’s hes-

Top left: Roger Moore in Brussels. Top right: The tower when it opened. Above: Avenue Louise before the tunnels

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itation evaporates as fortune hands him an unlikely subject for flattery: "We don't have this in London, these nice tunnels. They're beautiful."

As the Volvo emerges from one tunnel and approaches the entrance ramp of the next, a slender, angular structure soars above its sooty neighbours, filling the windscreen to the right. This is the Louise Tower, and like the tunnels, it is almost brand new.

Thanks to “ultra-modern offices” and the century-old prestige of Avenue Louise, it aims to attract wealthy foreign corporations. Tenants already include Texaco and Union Carbide. Employees are promised “the best views in Brussels.” The expressway and tunnels will let them cruise back and forth between large suburban homes afforded by their generous pay packages or slide beneath ground in the other direction after work to catch a show in town.

Six decades on, while the surroundings appear virtually unchanged, the world has moved on. The Saint is forgotten in Belgium, and nobody cruises anywhere in Brussels anymore. The “nice tunnels”, clogged with traffic, are boring a hole in the finances of the entire region, giving them a reputation on a par with oil companies and Union Carbide.

The tower however looks as if it was built yesterday. And to a large degree, it was.

Resurrection Stripped back to its concrete and steel skeleton in 2020, it is the latest Brussels tower to undergo a thorough renovation, due for inauguration in late November 2024.

Most recent overhauls of tall buildings in Brussels have hung the clothes of the 21st century on the discredited architecture of the postwar period, with smooth glass finishes or brighter colours. From the outside at least, the Louise Tower looks identical to the one glimpsed by Roger Moore decades ago.

The building’s owner, German real-estate group Patrizia, acquired the building in 2019. It inherited an existing partial renovation permit but decided to take the tower back to its skeleton, install state-of-the-art equipment and replace the facade in full. At the insistence of the Brussels authorities, the company had to retain the footprint and full-blooded 1960s exterior, but it made a virtue of this aesthetic constraint. “It’s our USP and popular with tenants,” says Patrizia Asset Manager Griet Heirwegh.

All the tower’s steel columns are on the exterior, and seen from above, they trace out a lozenge shape, which is replicated by the concrete core of the building, containing brand-new lifts and stairs. With the load-bearing elements at the centre and periphery, space is freed up for compact but

entirely open plan offices of 1,048 square metres on each of the 90-metre tower’s upper floors (including annexes there are 24 floors but no number 13, as superstition dictates).

The concentric compressed-hexagon shapes produce an interior and an exterior without right angles, a key element of the building's elegant profile which led to its protection as a landmark. The lozenge is also the logo of the building, now renamed The Louise, and is present in all signage, the same shape used by carmaker Renault (and Union Carbide).

A 60s icon for the 2020s Number 149 Avenue Louise was built in 1963-65 to the design of André and Jean Polak, the sons of Michel Polak, creator in the 1920s of the vast Résidence Palace apartment block, one of the earliest tall buildings in the city and located in the avenue’s longtime rival for prestige, the Leopold Quarter (now more known as the EU Quarter). Their output was prodigious. After inheriting the family business in 1948, they produced factories, apartments and public buildings all over Brussels and Belgium.

The Polak brothers’ best-known structure is the Atomium, designed in collaboration with engineer André Waterkyn as the symbol and main attraction of Expo 58. Evoking an iron unit cell magnified 165 billion times, its outline was the original Polak-inspired logo, representing both itself and Brussels in the run-up to the expo and ever since. Tests in a wind tunnel had shown that aluminium, a high-tech material associated with aerospace and modernity, was the best cladding for this monument to progress and optimism.

When the original owners of The Louise bought into the Polak brand in the wake of the expo, Atomium-style aluminium was also the choice for the tower’s cladding.

The architects for the latest renovation, Brussels-based A2RC, spent two years examining the Polak archives in order to understand the original project and adapt it to the present day.

The building was re-clad in aluminium, in its natural silver tone for the steel columns and black for the concrete floor plates, now insulated. The glass of the facade was replaced with modern, high-performance double-glazing in the same shade of green and remained set back 85 cm from the skeleton. This was an original 1963 choice, partly to reduce the heating effect of direct sunlight and partly to obscure the view, preserving workers unused to high buildings from vertigo. Coupled with airsource heat pumps and solar panels replacing obsolete HVAC tech, these choices al-

The new facade

lowed the project to cut The Louise’s energy consumption by up to 70% from previously without changing the external appearance.

A post-pandemic building While respecting the Polaks' aesthetic choices and updating the tech, A2RC also corrected what they call the errors of the past, mostly to do with quality of life within the complex.

The low ceiling of the lobby has gone, creating a double-height space with a half-lozenge shape gallery on the mezzanine level.

A benefit of the tower’s construction means that duplex levels can be created between floors.

The pharmacy business in one of the Tower’s two annexes has been replaced with a light-filled branch of eatery Fonteyne The Kitchen, entered from the street and leading back to an additional publicly accessible space encircling a new ‘Barista’s bar’. This area with its gold tones and natural lighting is the most obvious 2020s touch in the renovation, replacing a dark and inaccessible service zone.

A further correction of the 1960s plan is the creation of gardens on previously inaccessible roofs. Private ones for offices next to the two annexes and a large communal space with extensive seating above the former canteen in the centre of the city block.

The philosophy of the renovation was keeping everything that worked and upgrading everything that didn’t to create what Patrizia calls a post-pandemic building. They say tenants can make net savings by leasing

The Polak brothers’ best-known structure is the Atomium, designed in collaboration with engineer André Waterkyn as the symbol and main attraction of Expo 58.

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 77

smaller but much more energy-efficient spaces, reflecting a world where not everyone is at their desk every day and reduced carbon footprints are key.

They can also attract and retain new generations of employees accustomed to hybrid working, thanks to brighter spaces, access to fresh air and on-site services as well as a less brutal division between the workplace and daily life in its surroundings. Heirwegh said the main attraction for Patrizia, its clients and their employees is the neighbourhood, “the mix, you have residential, plenty of restaurants and you have offices, not like a business district or the European Quarter where you only have that. And the Palace of Justice nearby for the lawyers because we have a lot of lawyers.”

The first tenant arrived in July: international law firm Clifford Chance, which occupies the uppermost three floors (with a fabulous view down to the law courts). The building is on track to reach 57% occupancy in November 2024, Heirwegh says, with clients drawn by the “luxury” image of Avenue Louise. In the future, success will hinge upon Avenue Louise retaining that prestige, something it has been clinging onto for 160 years, often by its fingernails. Rent will be from €340 square metre per year, a record for the area.

The creation of Avenue Louise

The low ceiling of the lobby has gone, creating a doubleheight space with a halflozenge shape gallery on the mezzanine level. A benefit of the tower’s construction means that duplex levels can be created between floors.

The origin of the busy, car-choked avenue lies a gear change or two to the northwest in the so-called Goulet, the narrowest stretch of the street closest to central Brussels. It was built in the 1840s by two entrepreneurs as part of an upscale development on a small grid of streets just outside the city at the same time the Leopold Quarter was taking shape.

Almost immediately, plans were afoot to extend the street on a much wider scale, as far as the Bois de la Cambre, in competition with Rue de la Loi, two km to the northeast. Creating a 55-metre-wide, 2.4 km-long street across rolling countryside was beyond the means of two private citizens and the City of Brussels took over the task, annexing a wide strip of Ixelles and cutting that commune in two.

Like a railway line, the new avenue required extensive expropriation of land and engineering work to create a gentle slope rising 23 metres to meet a new, landscaped version of the Bois. A ‘viaduct’ was created by filling in the 18-metre deep Tenbosch valley and, where The Louise is located now, it took six years to carve an 18-metre ‘cutting’ through high ground.

The late historian (and resident) of the avenue, Xavier Duquenne spent 30 years tracking down a painting that he identified as depicting the immense excavations underway in 1862 at the future location of the Polaks’ tower.

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As a road, the avenue was complete by 1869 when Belgium’s first (horse-drawn) tram route began services between the city and the Bois. As a residential neighbourhood, it took until the 1890s for the street to fill up with houses. Construction noise and brick dust were the stuff of daily life for the first generation of early adopters.

Arriving decades after the Leopold Quarter, the avenue had a very different social mix to its rival streets to the northeast which had snapped up most of Belgium’s aristocracy.

But it had also learned from the urbanistic errors of the rather sepulchral stone corridors of its forerunner. From the start, the street was lined with carriageways and bridle paths lined with chestnut trees, and a 300-metre long planted flowerbed at its far end acted as a taster for the Bois de la Cambre beyond.

A red carpet At the turn of the 20th century, these delights were enjoyed by a very wealthy selection of the population drawn from business, finance, the arts, the law, academia and those on the way up in these fields.

In 1910, there was just a sprinkling of aristocrats, such as the baroness whose house and garden sat where the entrance of The Louise is now. On each side of her were an appeal court magistrate and a member of the all-conquering Delhaize grocery family. The 149 block was bookended to the northwest by a café with an apartment above and to the southeast by the vast mansion of Nestor Catteau, a senator whose property stretched the entire depth of the block. Catteau, then calling himself Louis, had started in the 1850s with a pâtisserie by the fish market in Rue

The tunnel entrance is right next to the tower

du Marché aux Poulets on the present-day location of Brucity and fought his way to eminence through restaurant ownership and domination of the Brussels catering guild.

Avenue Louise, that red carpet to the woods, was always a place that welcomed the successful regardless of background, as long as they conformed and struck the right tone. This included distinguished visitors, such as the wellgroomed and beautifully-spoken Roger Moore (son of a south London policeman).

Cracks appeared in this paradise for the (comparatively) meritocratic carriage trade soon after the First World War as the housing stock began to show its age and as carriages were retired in favour of cars. Demolitions started in the 1920s, accelerating over the following decade as labour costs made large houses expensive to maintain and staff. Those who remained in the area began to stack themselves in vast luxury apartments that replaced their own houses and those of neighbours who, repelled by the increasing noise, now used the avenue as a fast access road to Brussels from their peaceful suburban villas.

Postwar reinventions By 1945, the avenue’s prestige was at perhaps its lowest ebb. Decades of car use had devastated a roadway designed for hooves and wooden carriages and likewise, the remaining large mansions appeared to have no useful role in the street’s future. In the 149 block of Avenue Louise, Catteau’s was the first to go, replaced by the lumpen apartment block we see today, opposite Victor Horta’s Hôtel Tassel. This blighted the remaining large houses in the block, which by 1960 were used as makeshift offices while the turreted former café on the corner of Rue Defacqz was a branch of Delhaize and they would all be demolished.

When the tower, the first in Avenue Louise, was built in 1963-65 alongside the entrance ramp of the new tunnel whisking motorists below the Rue du Bailli crossroads these were statements of future intent, not intended as end points. It was expected that far more towers would follow and that through traffic would disappear into a tunnel running the entire length of the avenue. The 1969 Louiseville scheme plotted the replacement of the Goulet with an enormous ziggurat topped by two pyramids of up to 100 metres tall. A 1970 city masterplan anticipated four additional towers in the avenue proper and removed all limitations on office space at a time when this already accounted for two-thirds of the entire built volume of the street.

Of all the older buildings along it, only the two Horta mansions, the Hôtels Solvay and Max Hallet were earmarked for preservation.

The 1970s oil shock, subsequent debt crises and the saturation of the office market amid

CGI images of the main lobby and the garden

competition elsewhere in Brussels (not least the avenue’s old nemesis, the Leopold Quarter) put paid to these ambitions. Just two more towers were built, amid mounting opposition from heritage groups.

Frozen streetscape Since the 1980s, the streetscape of Avenue Louise has been largely frozen. The two underpasses with their long approach ramps remain stubs, phase one of a scheme to properly separate fast and local traffic that never arrived, and ever since a barrier between the Ixelles neighbourhoods on each side. The tunnels are worn out from traffic far heavier than they were ever designed for, and some parts have been reduced to one lane as they undergo repairs. They are ever more expensive to maintain as the Brabant countryside, eating into their ageing fabric, attempts to reclaim its territory from beneath.

Above ground, many of the avenue’s buildings, from the oldest 1860s houses to those built on the cusp of the 21st century, now

As a road, the avenue was complete by 1869 when Belgium’s first (horse-drawn) tram route began services between the city and the Bois.

As a residential neighbourhood, it took until the 1890s for the street to fill up with houses.

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The Latin villa next door

The building of single-family mansions along Avenue Louise virtually disappeared after 1918. An exception was the Hôtel Wielemans in Rue Defacqz, on the northern edge of the 149 block, where the wealthy brewing family built a new villa.

Designed by Adrien Blomme, it was inspired by a holiday the Wielemans couple took with the architect in Granada. The 1926 Art Deco house, whose central patio for entertaining is decorated with hundreds of tiles imported from Spain, is part of the tower complex and has been beautifully restored.

The interior, which preserves its extraordinary master bedroom with walls clad in a silver reminiscent of the Atomium, is available for corporate hire. A new doorway punched in its garden wall leads via a spiral staircase in modish pre-rusted CortTen to the new terraced garden behind the tower, connecting the two buildings directly for the first time.

By 1945, decades of car use had devastated a roadway designed for hooves and wooden carriages and likewise.

benefit from protection from arbitrary demolition, reinforced by a new category of ‘legal inventory’ of heritage in force since August 2024 (but yet to be seriously tested). But what are the prospects for widespread renovation in such a dismal environment?

The owners of The Louise are betting on the quality of their development combined with the continuing prestige of the avenue.

Their shiny objet d’art could play a role in rejuvenating the street, perhaps encouraging other investors to give its modernist peers a new sheen.

Late in life, as the Atomium celebrated its 50th anniversary, the surviving Polak brother Jean told an interviewer that the Atomium would always be “our best calling card, we also made the Monnaie and World Trade

Centre...” in reference to their role in two of the most reviled avatars of Brusselization.

Perhaps the sumptuously restored Louise Tower, or its lozenge logo, could now join the Atomium on that calling card. An improvement in its surroundings would help.

The inhabitants of neighbouring streets (Defacqz, Livourne, Faider) have long campaigned against the prostitution industry in the area. Fed by the avenue’s hotels, nighclubs and fast (at nighttime at least) access by car, Champagne bars with private rooms and saunas and kerb-crawling at the foot of number 149 have brought noise and violence to their streets, they complain.

The trade arrived soon after the construction of the avenue, taking on many new forms following the closure of Belgium's maisons closes in 1948. In 2001, a collaboration between three Brussels police forces to tackle prostitution of minors was labelled ‘Operation Louise’.

An avenue stuck in traffic Back in the Volvo in 1967, the interviewer returns the compliment about the nice tunnels with a comment on London’s Underground, something that doesn’t yet exist in the Belgian capital. “Impossible to travel on,” grunts Moore as he powers up the ramp in front of the Hôtel Solvay. It’s the tunnels that are ‘impossible’ to use now, backed up with traffic.

As are the pavements of the avenue, by the standards of the 2020s. To move between them, pedestrians must take long detours around approach ramps and high-speed stretches full of stationary cars, picking their way across patched, puddle-prone pavements past poignant fragments of tree-lined bridle paths now serving as dog conveniences.

The tower at number 149 was last renovated 30 years ago in the mid-1990s, three decades after its construction, by then-owner, insurer Generali (its name, picked out in giant letters

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Inspiring the outstanding.

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Since the 1980s, the streetscape of Avenue Louise has been largely frozen. The two underpasses with their long approach ramps remain stubs, phase one of a scheme to properly separate fast and local traffic that never arrived, and ever since a barrier between the Ixelles neighbourhoods on each side.

high up on the building long gave it this unofficial name familiar to Brusseleirs).

The company said in 1993 that the continuing prestige of the avenue depended on the tunnel being buried along its entire route. Thirty years on, whatever the solution for the tunnels may be, it is not going to be more tunnels.

In October 2023, Brussels Mobility, the agency in charge of road infrastructure in the region, commissioned a study for a new masterplan to rein in the domination of cars over Avenue Louise. It promised "a pleasant and liveable commercial space: greener, safer, quieter" with fewer tunnel ramps and real cycle lanes. In other words, keeping everything that (more or less) works and upgrading everything that doesn’t.

There has been no update on the proposals since. More than two years after a permit was issued for the renovation of nearby Avenue de la Toison d’Or virtually nothing has been done and both streets remain littered with cars, parked or crawling along. Avenue Louise itself is stuck in traffic, at the back of a long wish list of projects for Brussels and the impact of the 2024 elections is still unfolding. Six decades on, the wait continues.

Regus IT Tower

The next generation The second tower in the avenue, a 102-metre high HQ for the ITT Corporation overlooking the lush valley housing the 13th-century Abbaye de la Cambre complex, was announced in 1968 (architect Walter Bresseleers). The principal sponsor of the scheme was Brussels alderman for public works Paul Vanden Boeynants, a recent Belgian Prime Minister, known popularly as VDB. An angry and surreal exchange he held with campaigners against the tower encapsulates the frustration with top-down decision-making during the zenith of the period now referred to as Bruxellisation.

Cutting their campaigning teeth, the newly-established Archives d’Architecture Moderne (AAM – Modern Architecture Archives, now part of CIVA) and ARAU, accused ITT of blackmailing the city with a threat to quit Brussels for Paris unless the permit was granted. They said as well as destroying valuable heritage on Avenue Louise, the tower would literally cast a shadow over the sumptuous gardens of the abbey.

VDB insisted the view would not suffer thanks to the quality of the architecture and because the building would be “entirely translucent”, and accused his opponents of lacking “the most basic objectivity”. He got his way. Today, the black (and opaque) hulk of the building still objectively dominates the La Cambre site and ITT is long gone, having relocated to Paris a few years after it opened.

Now known as the Regus IT Tower, its brutalist concrete service shaft overlooking the avenue was decorated with gigantic black and white stickers in 2020. The distressed-pattern artwork, installed using abseils and covering 4,000 square metres, claims to be Europe’s largest mural.

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A 2020s relook is also on the cards for the third and final (for now) tower on Avenue Louise, the far less controversial SAIFI building from the mid-1970s (architect Henri Montois).

Long since known as the Blue Tower, its construction swept away 40 houses over an entire city block. While not entirely translucent, its glass exterior looked forward to the less confrontational corporate architecture of the 1990s.

A permit to add three storeys to the 92-metre tower, the topmost of which to house a publicly accessible, panoramic Sky Bar, is still awaiting the outcome of appeals. The plinth of the tower, as well as the rooftop, would be picked out in the dull gold metallic cladding that has become the signature of post-pandemic Brussels.

The Louise Tower, planted in that cutting, is integrated within the urban tissue of Ixelles each side of the avenue, thanks also to its flanking annexes, which respect the scale of its neighbours and is arguably a local landmark. Its more contentious successors meanwhile, perched on the crest of the Maelbeek valley, dominate views from far around.

Rejoignez-nous!

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PROMOTED CONTENT

Using Bamboo to Deliver Benefits for the World Speech by Ambassador Cai Run at the China-Europe-Africa Forum on Bamboo technology innovation and green industry cooperation Dear Representatives, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Friends,

Bamboo culture and craftsmanship have been passed down in China for thousands of years.

Good afternoon! It is my great pleasure to get together with all of you to unveil the “Bamboo as a Substitute for Plastic” Exhibition, and discuss China-Europe-Africa bamboo technology innovation and green industry cooperation. Just now, Ms. Jiang Zehui, CoChair of the Board of Trustees of the International Bamboo and Rattan Organization (INBAR), delivered a video message. On behalf of the Chinese Mission to the European Union, I would like to warmly welcome all the guests being here today, and sincerely thank the International Bamboo and Rattan Organization for co-initiating and co-hosting this event. I also wish to express my gratitude to the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, the Nanping Municipal Government, the Europe-Asia Center, the China Cultural Center in Brussels and other relevant parties for your strong support and assistance.

This is my first public event since arriving in Brussels. I am honored to have been entrusted by President Xi Jinping with the mission of serving as the 16th Chinese Am-

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bassador to the European Union before the 50th anniversary of China-EU diplomatic relations. With great honor comes great responsibility. My colleagues at the Mission and I will work closely with friends from all sectors to implement the important consensus reached between President Xi Jinping and EU leaders. We will seize opportunities and meet challenges, and contribute to the healthy and stable development of China-EU relations.

Today’s event is very helpful in enhancing mutual understanding, promoting green development and jointly addressing global challenges such as climate change. To this end, I would like to share with you three points.

First, China is ready to contribute Chinese wisdom. Bamboo is an important symbol in traditional Chinese culture and the spirit of the Chinese nation. We have a deep connection with bamboo since long time ago. The saying that “Better to have no meat to eat than live where there are no bamboos”, vividly reflects the ancient Chinese tradition of cherishing bamboo. Bamboo culture and craftsmanship have been passed down in China for thousands of years, embodying the traditional ecological concept that the laws of nature govern all things and that man must seek harmony with nature. This wisdom has contributed greatly to the enduring development of Chinese civilization.

Today, in the face of global risks and challenges such as climate change and environmental pollution, the Chinese government and the International Bamboo and Rattan Organization have jointly launched the “Bamboo as a Substitute for Plastic” initiative, offering a Chinese solution to reduce plastic pollution, address climate change, and accelerate the implementation of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Balancing ecological and economic benefits, this initiative holds broad prospects for development and breathes new life into the ancient Chinese wisdom.

Second, China is shouldering its responsibility as a major responsible country. Ecological well-being is crucial to the welfare of people and future of the world. China considers ecological civilization as fundamen-

tally important for national development.

We protect the environment as we protect our eyes, believe that clear waters and green mountains are mountains of gold and silver, and follow a green, low-carbon development path. China has reduced the average annual concentration of fine particulate matter in key cities by 57% over the past decade, decreased energy consumption per unit of GDP by 43.8% compared to 2006, increased the share of renewable energy in total installed power capacity to over 50%, and raised forest coverage ratio to 24.02%. China has become the world’s fastest country in terms of air quality improvement, energy intensity reduction, renewable energy utilization and forest resource growth. The recently concluded Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made important plans for deepening the reform of the ecological civilization system, injecting strong momentum into China’s efforts to accelerate modernization of harmony between man and nature.

Guided by the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind, China actively participates in global environmental and climate governance. We fully and effectively implement the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement, engage in energy transition cooperation under G20 and other frameworks, and set up the South-South Climate Cooperation Fund and the Kunming Biodiversity Fund.

In the bamboo and rattan sector, China adopted the Three-Year Action Plan to Accelerate Bamboo as a Substitute for Plastic. Currently, China holds about 20% of the world’s bamboo resources and has a complete bamboo industrial chain, reducing and sequestering 302 million tons of carbon annually. As a key participant, contributor and leader in global ecological civilization, China is ready to make relentless efforts in building a community of life for man and nature.

Third, China is committed to pooling the collective wisdom and strength of China, Europe and Africa. There is only one Earth and one home for humanity. Faced with global risks and challenges, no country can stand alone. Unity and cooperation is the only right way forward. China and Europe are two major forces for world peace, two big markets for common development and two great civilizations for human progress. As the largest developing country and the continent with the largest number of developing countries, China and Africa are important members of the Global South. We are also good friends and brothers who share a common destiny, and indispensable players in global governance. By joining hands together, China, Europe and Africa can accomplish great things and make significant contributions.

President Xi Jinping met with EU leaders

on several occasions, during which important consensus was reached on strengthening cooperation in green transition. The China-EU High-Level Environment and Climate Dialogue, since its establishment in 2020, has been held successfully five times, further deepening the China-EU Green Partnership. The recent Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation elevated China-Africa relations to an all-weather community with a shared future for the new era. The Summit also adopted the Beijing Declaration and the Action Plan, and decided to carry out ten partnership actions for modernization. Green development is a key part of this effort. These examples show that China-Europe-Africa cooperation in green development enjoys a solid foundation and huge potential. The bamboo industry is a good starting point.

China is the largest producer of bamboo products. Europe is a major consumer market for bamboo products and Africa is one of the most promising regions for bamboo resource development. This makes the future of our trilateral cooperation on “Bamboo as a Substitute for Plastic” bright. There is a lot we can do together.

China Europe - Africa cooperation in green development enjoys a solid foundation and huge potential.

The bamboo industry is a good starting point.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends, Chinese people often say unity is strength.

European friends say that a single tree cannot block the chilly wind. And African friends say that one single pillar is not sufficient to build a house. Looking ahead, China is ready to join hands with the broader global community, including Europe and Africa, to promote green development, seek harmony between man and nature, and build a clean and beautiful world.

Thank you.

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PROMOTED CONTENT

Speech by Chargé d’affaires Zhu Jing at the 2024 National Day Reception 25 September 2024, Tangla Hotel

Since the entry into the WTO, China’s overall tariff rate has been cut from 15.3% to 7.3%, lower than the 9.8% accession commitment.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished Guests, Dear friends, Good evening! It is my great pleasure to get together with you all to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. On behalf of the Chinese Mission to the European Union, I would like to extend a warm welcome to all of you for being here tonight. I also wish to express my sincere gratitude to all the friends for your care for China’s development and your strong support for friendly exchanges and practical cooperation between China and the EU. Over the past 75 years, under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of Chi-

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na, the self-reliant and hardworking Chinese people have successfully embarked on the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and achieved a tremendous transformation from standing up and growing prosperous to becoming strong. This July, the Communist Party of China held the Third Plenary Session of its 20th Central Committee, making systematic plans for further deepening reform comprehensively to advance Chinese modernization, setting out a new blueprint for China’s development. The Chinese people are now advancing with full confidence toward building a great country on all fronts and pursuing national rejuvenation through Chinese modernization.

Chinese modernization is a major inno-

vation in both theory and practice of human modernization and also a significant contribution to the cause of global development.

Opening up is a defining feature of Chinese modernization. Looking ahead, China will stay committed to developing new institutions for a high-standard open economy. We aim to promote reform and development through openness, and also seek common development through openness with countries around the world, including Europe.

To this end, China will first expand institutional opening up. Since the entry into the WTO, China’s overall tariff rate has been cut from 15.3% to 7.3%, lower than the 9.8% accession commitment. We have taken actions to align with high-standard international economic and trade rules, and are actively promoting the process of joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA). Last month, China and the EU launched the cross-border data flow exchange mechanism and successfully held its first meeting.

Second, China will broaden market access across the board. The latest number of items on the negative list for foreign investment has been cut to 29. The list will be further shortened in the future. Despite the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment

not ratified by the EU, China has unilaterally fulfilled its commitment of removing all market access restrictions in the manufacturing sector and expanded the openness of the financial sector. Not long ago, China made public its plan to allow wholly foreign-owned hospitals in certain areas. And we will continue to promote wider and orderly opening up in sectors such as telecommunications, the Internet, education, culture and medical services.

Cumulative Chinese direct investment in the EU has amounted to $102.4 billion, creating 270,000 jobs.

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Third, China will take proactive steps to further open up. At the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation early this month, President Xi Jinping announced the decision to give all LDCs having diplomatic relations with China, including 33 countries in Africa, zero-tariff treatment for 100 percent tariff lines. This has made China the first major developing country and the first major economy to take such a step. Other measures including the Belt and Road Initiative, pilot free trade zones and the China International Import Expo are all concrete actions taken by China on its own for greater opening up. We also offered visa-free access for 11 EU countries in an effort to facilitate people-to-people and cultural exchanges.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Friends, Europe is an important partner in the pursuit of Chinese modernization. The first Sino-foreign joint venture was set up with a European country. Many European companies and friends have accompanied us on the road to reform and opening up, making an important contribution to China’s modernization for which we are sincerely grateful and will always remember. At the same time, Europe has benefited greatly from China’s development and its cooperation with China. The annual trade between China and the EU has reached nearly $800 billion. The cumulative Chinese direct investment in the EU has amounted to $102.4 billion, creating 270,000 jobs. These exchanges have improved the lives of Europeans and increased Europe’s competitiveness.

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Facts have shown that Chinese modernization is not a risk, still less a threat, but a source of progress and prosperity for Europe. The more China modernizes, the wider we will open our doors, and the more opportunities will be created for Europe and vitality for the world’s shared growth and prosperity.

No matter how the international situation changes, China will remain committed to promoting the comprehensive strategic partnership with the EU. We will continue to see the EU as a key partner for economic and trade cooperation, a priority partner for scientific and technological cooperation, and a reliable partner for industrial and supply chain cooperation. We are also ready to intensify allout people-to-people and cultural exchanges with Europe, reduce and resolve differences through dialogue, in order to build greater mutual trust and a more accurate perception of each other. We can help each other succeed in the process of Chinese modernization and European integration, and bring more impetus of peace and prosperity to this changing and turbulent world. Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of China-EU diplomatic relations. Let us join hands to implement the strategic consensus reached by President Xi Jinping and EU leaders, and create a better future for China-EU relations.

Long live the common prosperity of China and the EU and happiness of our peoples!

Long live the mutually beneficial cooperation of China and the EU and friendship of our peoples!

Thank you.

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The grand plan to revive the golden age of the luxury hotel For nearly 100 years, the Grand Hotel Astoria was the destination in Brussels, frequented by dignitaries and celebrities. But it closed in 2007 with a plan for restoration. In November 2024, after 17 years in vacant disrepair, it is set to reopen as the Corinthia Grand Hotel Astoria Brussels.

Angela Dansby reports on what the new owners promise is the most luxurious hotel in the city

B

oasting a magnificent stained-glass ceiling over its courtyard, a glorious neo-classical façade and rooms dripping in luxury, the Corinthia Grand Hotel Astoria Brussels could be a throwback to the grandeur and glamour of the Belle Époque.

Which it was. For more than a century, as the Grand Hotel Astoria, it was the hotel of choice for the likes of Winston Churchill, Emperor Hirohito, James Joyce and Salvador Dalí.

Now being meticulously restored, renovated and expanded, the opulent hotel has been updated with the latest structural and functional technologies. It’s one of only a handful of five-star superior hotels in Belgium but its new owners say it deserves more. “It's already referred to as a palace hotel, but in Belgium, we don't quite have that classification yet,” says Managing Director Edward Leenders.

The Corinthia has 126 unusually large rooms, including 90 standard rooms 30 square metres each and 36 suites – five of which are “signature suites” of up to 330 square metres. The latter topfloor penthouses are lavish, each with a private gym, treatment room and extensive terraces with panoramic views. The hotel also has two Michelin-starred chefs, a gastronomic restaurant, Belgian brasserie, tearoom, cocktail bar, swimming pool, spa, wellness centre and retail spaces.

Fit for royalty – a standard room is €700 and penthouses up to €21,000 per night – the Corinthia is aptly located on Rue Royale. “The hotel chain aims to attract a new kind of clientele to Brussels, an audience not yet served in Europe's capital,” Leenders says. “You can apply gold and make something look very fancy, but where we're going to make a difference is how we feel and how we're going to make people feel.”

To this end, he wants the ultra-luxury hotel to be accessible and relaxed. “Our expectations have changed. We no longer want to be called ‘Sir and Madam’, with somebody running behind us,

opening the door of the toilet. We would like to be human again,” he says.

The hotel is owned by Corinthia Hotels group, a global luxury brand with properties, largely heritage buildings, in 10 destinations. But staff say that they want to attract locals. “We don't want to be one of those stiff luxury hotels,” notes Sophie Clarke, director of sales and marketing.

“We've all been there, right, where we're too nervous to go through the doors because maybe we don't have a reservation and everyone stares at you. This is absolutely not what we're going to be.

We want everybody to feel welcome.”

The Corinthia also wants to make the most of home-grown expertise, especially when it comes to cuisine. “The joy of having partners locally is that they will be regularly in our kitchens,” Clarke says. “Often in luxury hotels or elsewhere, Michelin star chefs sign menus and then you never see them again.”

Events and services With a staff of about 250 - including some who previously worked at the Astoria - the Corinthia has the manpower to stage elaborate events: its main space, Salon Elisabeth, has 80 to 100 seats for events like candlelight concerts and gala dinners. “It’s really a place for celebration. Like back in the days when women used to come down the grand staircase in their beautiful dresses, I'm sure that this space will encourage people to get dressed up and go out for a special evening as well,” Clarke says.

From 1975 to 2007, the Astoria held chamber music concerts every Sunday morning, including by the annual winners of the Queen Elisabeth Competition. The Corinthia aims to resurrect this tradition as well as host events in connection with its featured Belgian brands. It also has two Steinway pianos on the ground floor as the Astoria once did.

The Corinthia hopes its service and opulence

We've all been there, right, where we're too nervous to go through the doors because maybe we don't have a reservation and everyone stares at you. This is absolutely not what we're going to be.

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It’s really a place for celebration.

Like back in the days when women used to come down the grand staircase in their beautiful dresses.

with make it stand out from the city’s other top hotels. Even the other five-star hotels – Juliana, Amigo and Steigenberger Wiltcher’s – are about half starting price of the Corinthia, which is also in a neighbourhood apart from the other top hotels downtown and on Avenue Louise.

Originally called the Astoria Bristol and later renamed Hotel Astoria, it was built for the Brussels International Exposition of 1910 at the request of King Leopold II, who sought a place to welcome fellow kings as well as queens, princes and emperors. The hotel’s Rue Royale location was key: just 500 metres from the Belgian parliament and amid chic stores like luxury jewellers.

The Hotel Astoria itself replaced the former Hotel Mengelle owned by the Goossens Bara family. It was designed by Henri Van Dievoet, nephew of architect Joseph Poelaert, in a mixed Beaux-Arts style with a neoclassical façade and majestic interior. The Astoria was one of three famed hotels in Brussels during the Belle Époque along with the Grand Hotel on Boulevard Anspach (torn down long ago) and Hotel Métropole on Place de Brouckère (slated for renovation).

Since 2000, the property has been listed as a protected monument in the Brussels-Capital Region. Facing mounting restoration and renovation costs, it closed in 2007 and was then sold to Global Hotels & Resorts, owned by Saudi Arabian Sheikh Mohamed Youssef El-Khereji.

The sheikh made a commitment to Belgian

Prince – now King – Philippe to restore the hotel to its former glory, and Belgian architect Francis Metzger, who specialises in restoring heritage buildings, was tapped for the job. “I was going to this hotel regularly, having a drink in its bar like a lot of Brussels people,” Metzger says. “Then one day, I got a phone call from Sheikh Mohamed's team to become the architect of this operation.”

The project not only included the historic hotel but also five buildings around it that the Goossens Bara family had bought when they sold Hotel Mengelle. “We had to create something coherent out of elements that had different heights, floors which didn't match up, etc,” Metzger says. The hotel had been tweaked at various times between 1910 and 2007 but had lost some of its lustre over time. “We had to preserve what made the work and at the same time, bring it into the 21st century with a quality that people who can afford these hotels demand today,” he says.

The first phase of work began in 2010 and involved demolitions and cleaning, including the removal of asbestos and pollution. “We removed all the partitions and all the electricity that had been added over time so that we could carry out a sound analysis of the building and estimate the cost of the work,” Metzger says.

With costs soaring, Sheikh Mohammed sought to offload it and found a buyer in 2016: Corinthia Hotels. The group agreed to the Belgian and

Left: The hotel today. Right: And in the 1920s

Food and drink The Corinthia will offer five culinary establishments: Palais Royale: The hotel’s flagship restaurant featuring French-Japanese fusion cuisine by double Michelin-starred chef David Martin of La Paix in Brussels Le Petit Bon Bon: An upscale Belgian brasserie with an open kitchen by chef Christophe Hardiquest, the former owner of two-Michelin-star restaurant Bon Bon and currently at Menssa in Brussels Under the Stairs: A high-end cocktail bar by mixologist Hannah Van Ongevalle of The Pharmacy in Knokke, featuring inventive drinks in a cosy atmosphere

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Palm Court: A large courtyard serving morning coffee, afternoon tea and pre-dinner aperitifs under a stunning, 11-metre-high stained-glass ceiling Josephine's Café: A modern tearoom in the spa for conscious eating Belgian artisans and artists are featured as much as possible, from a scent created for the hotel to several artworks and brands.

Near the hotel entrance is a luxury concept store featuring around 10 high-end Belgian brands not previously represented in Brussels. The shop, spa and Le Petit Bon Bon have entrances outside the hotel on Rue Royale to encourage local patrons.

Left: The original stained glass upper hallway. Right: CGI rendering of the main lobby with the restored glass ceiling

Brussels government plans to restore the original stained-glass roof, so the project moved ahead more quickly, with the facelift estimated to cost at least €60 million

Architectural feats Metzger says the main architectural challenge lay in combining restoration, renovation and new construction. It began with research in three sectors: the hotel’s history, archaeology and pathology.

The historical research involved examining documents on how the hotel was built and “lost its identity” over time. “Our effort is about reclaiming the identity of a vanished work and at the same time, bringing that work into line with the needs of today's society in terms of electricity, plumbing, heating and insulation technologies,” Metzger says.

Metzger likens the archaeological research to a detective arriving at a crime scene. One technology used was stratigraphy, which removes layer upon layer of paint on walls with blades to see their original colours. The hotel’s classified rooms have different paint colours as a result.

Finally, the pathological study looked at the building’s ‘diseases’ or faults, like leaks and cracks. “It’s like a medical study in that we scan the building and try to determine which diseases are present,” Metzger says. “After diagnosis, we set up a remedial campaign, with specifications and technical proposals.”

The elements that could be dismantled were restored in a workshop and the rest on site like the stained-glass ceiling and crown mouldings.

The ceiling was the first major element restored to close off precipitation and enable continuous work underneath. The original design was shaped like a rectangle with sloping sides, but it was replaced in 1947 and 2000 by flat and coloured glass ceilings, respectively.

“It was difficult to make the cupola water-

tight with the means available in 1910,” Metzger says. “The Goossens Bara family told me about the bucket they had to put underneath it because the water was coming through. Today, of course, technology has enabled us to redo this canopy as watertight, decorative and easy to maintain.”

Restoring the ceiling was particularly challenging as the architectural drawings had been lost, so Metzger’s team could only rely on period black and white photos. They used descriptive geometry to understand the scale of the glass roof in three dimensions via a digital video footprint. “We put this historical glass panel back in place on the basis of a hypothesis,” Metzger says.

Elsewhere, a golden A for Astoria remains above the entrance as a nod to the hotel’s storied past. Gold leafing has been restored on the exterior with meticulous craftsmanship.

All listed walls like the façade are original but anything inside had to come out and be redone without damaging the walls. “It's obviously difficult to fit all of today's technology into a hotel that wasn't designed for it,” Metzger says.

The construction team of around 300 were suspended on stilts and cables, even when digging 14 meters below the property to create a new floor for the spa. They also added two new floors on top, mainly for signature suites.

“All the projects we work on are contemporary, but they're meant to be respectful of an architectural moment that was produced by previous architects,” Metzger says. “It's like having a conversation with someone who's no longer here. And it's a respectful conversation in the sense that you understand what he wanted to do.”

The group agreed to the Belgian and Brussels government plans to restore the original stained-glass roof, so the project moved ahead more quickly, with the final bill for the facelift estimates to be upwards of €60 million.

Restoring the ceiling was particularly challenging as the architectural drawings had been lost, so Metzger’s team could only rely on period black and white photos.

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From books to butchers: The battle for Galerie Bortier's future Once a hidden gem for Brussels book lovers and intellectuals, Galerie Bortier faces a controversial transformation into a gastronomic hub, leaving longtime patrons questioning its future. Sabine Zednik-Hammonds asks if the gallery can keep its soul, or if it is destined to become a tourist trap

The gallery, before the changes

I took over an empty space that used to have a bookshop.

It was like a miracle.

T

ucked between a row of houses only a few steps away from the Grand Place, Central Station and Mont des Arts, nestles the snaking Galerie

Bortier.

Designed by architect Jean-Pierre Cluysenaar, the creator of the Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries, it is their slightly less grand little sister. With its intimate neo-Renaissance interior reminiscent of old Paris galleries, for over 175 years, Galerie Bortier has been a refuge for bookworms, collectors, and dreamers – making it one of few remaining havens for 'bouqui-

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nistes'– specialists in second-hand or antiquarian books. Still, many Brusselsers have never heard of it, let alone stepped inside.

Now, it faces a controversial transformation. After years of gradual decline, the Brussels city government is attempting to revitalise the sleepy gallery. In 2023, it gave the creator of the successful Brussels food halls Wolf and Fox, Thierry Goor, permission to transform Galerie Bortier into a gastronomic destination complete with a butcher, a fishmonger and a collaborative brasserie of local brewers.

The revamped gallery is set to reopen late in

November, but the transformation has left the gallery’s most loyal patrons feeling disoriented at best and rejected at worst.

Bookends The gallery was built to link Rue Madeleine and Rue Saint-Jean to the first covered food market in Brussels (now the La Madeleine concert hall) – a culinary link that may have inspired the new food hall. However, throughout its history, the gallery has been a hub for pioneering intellectual, cultural, and social movements. The father of philately – the study of stamps – Jean-Baptiste Moens established a shop in Galerie Bortier in 1853, where he bought and sold new and second-hand books and stamps.

This sense of heritage has been maintained over the centuries.

“My dream was to be in the gallery ever since I was a child,” says Marian Lens from her home piled high with books and trinkets, her white hair cut into a short, androgynous style. A sociologist by training, and one of Brussels's most prominent and vocal LGBT figures, Lens opened Artemys in 1985. The shop was the city’s first and largest lesbian feminist bookshop, offering more than 10,000 titles on feminism, lesbianism and the history of women.

Growing up in a village outside of Brussels, Lens’s family would travel to the capital to buy clothes, books for school, and sheet music for her piano lessons. She remembers how there was never any need to venture far from the station and over to the Grand Place or Rue Neuve, because there was such a concentration of shops related to art, books and music. “Our first stop was always Galerie Bortier, so for me, it was very famous,” she explains in nearly perfect English.

Lens first opened Artemys in Ixelles, as high rent prices prevented her from doing so in the city centre. Then, thanks to a donation in 1987, Lens decided to see if there was availability in Galerie Bortier. “And there was! I took over an empty space that used to have a bookshop. It was like a miracle,” she recalls. “The gallery had always been all about books and changing the world. It was beautiful with all the art around and music.

It was logical for me to try and be there.”

For decades, Lens sold books, art, photographs, and music scores either by lesbian and feminist writers or on the topics of feminism and lesbianism. “But we couldn’t live from selling books alone,” she explains. Lens and her fellow booksellers had to be innovative, always looking out for the next big trend they could sell, from records to tapes, to CDs, almost like present-day influencers.

Her most popular products by far, however, were postcards. After witnessing another shopkeeper on Rue des Bouchers’ success at selling them, Lens saw their potential for disseminating artwork cheaply and accessibly and began to stock her own collection of over 50,000 postcards featuring work by female artists.

Although greeting card carousels are now common bookshop features, Lens insists, “This was the beginning.” Soon, museums and other booksellers began to sell them too. “And then: voilà, I had to find something new again,” she recalls with a sigh as she shows me photos of Artemys’s golden days.

Struggling shopkeepers Life as a shopkeeper in Galerie Bortier was not smooth sailing. “It was always a struggle,” Lens says. Not only was the business of books not a very lucrative one, but shop owners would also frequently bump heads with Brussels' Régie Foncière – the governmental housing association that manages the property on behalf of the City of Brussels, which owns it.

Specifically, Lens cites the example of a big showroom in the gallery that she said the Régie simply left empty. In 1993, the shops in Galerie Bortier decided to band together and create a

The booksellers condemned the fact that “for years they have been put in an increasingly precarious situation: rents are too high, rates are arbitrary, leases have not been renewed, the premises have been abandoned for more than a decade.

Top: Artemys in the 1980s. Above: As seen by artist Francois Gailliard in 1919

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 95

The empty space will soon be filled by four new businesses: a fishmonger's, a butcher's, a brasserie and a wine shop.

non-profit organisation called ‘Galerie Bortier’ to promote the gallery among the public and the media, but also to make it a vibrant cultural destination. They organised many events, including a yearly exhibition in the big showroom, hoping to encourage the Régie to run the space and take on the responsibility of making it attractive.

But to no avail. When the transformation of the gallery was announced in 2023, the gallery’s booksellers and frequenters launched a petition in response, calling for “a genuine call for projects to be issued, in full legality and transparency, with the involvement of all those concerned on the ground.”

The booksellers condemned the fact that “for years they have been put in an increasingly precarious situation: rents are too high, rates are arbitrary, leases have not been renewed, the premises have been abandoned for more than a decade, the large showroom has not been managed, etc.” More than 13,600 people signed the petition, but with no response from the City of Brussels, works went ahead.

Lens had suffered from the Régie’s neglect of the gallery decades ago when she had no choice but to close her beloved bookshop in 2002. For 15 years, Artemys had not only been a place for Lens to “sell and share ideas,” it was also a safe space for members of the LGBTQ+ community, many of whom saw her as a protector and mentor who provided mental and financial support.

“For a while, I felt invincible,” Lens says. “People would say ‘You’re our sunshine.’”

However, after nearly two decades of fighting to keep her business alive and support her community, when Amazon emerged as a competitor, Lens had no fight left in her. She began to suffer from extreme burnout. “I couldn’t even keep my food and drink down. I thought I was dying.” She came to the difficult decision to close Artemys. “I'm lucky that I can talk about it, but it took me time to be able to do it without feeling sad. I'm a fighter, but it took me 10 years to re-

The two entrances to the gallery, on Rue Saint-Jean, left, and Rue de la Madeleine, right

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cover,” she says. “I thought I would be running Artemys until my dying day.”

Despite the profound pain of her loss, Lens bounced back with her characteristic energy and now runs L-Tour, organising tours and events around Brussels to highlight the history of the city's LGBTQ+ communities. While Galerie Bortier used to be an unskippable stop on her tours, she said she no longer plans to include it. To her, by changing the gallery’s main vocation from a cultural one to a food one, “They are breaking something that was so old. The gallery was made for books.”

A vision for the future?

Work in the gallery is near completion and the empty space will soon be filled by four new businesses: a fishmonger's, a butcher's, a brasserie and a wine shop. In a nod to the gallery’s food-related past, Goor has invited big names from Brussels' culinary scene.

With an emphasis on craftsmanship and quality, Dierendonck butcher, fromagerie Soeurs, a wine shop, and a florist will all set up shop, along with a new Filigranes bookstore. Seven Brussels craft breweries – La Senne, Brussels Beer Project, Surréaliste, Jungle, La Mule, En Stoemelings and L'Ermitage – will together form a joint brasserie.

While three of the original small businesses – Pierre Coumans's rare books store, Fanny Genicot's second-hand bookshop and Nicolas Van Cutsem's antique store – have been included in the project, several of the gallery's original shops have been forced to shut. One of the gallery's largest and most popular bookstores, La Bouquinerie, closed its doors in March 2024.

In his antique shop a few stalls down from where Artemys used to be, Van Cutsem, who opened his shop there eight years ago, says, "My general feeling is one of curiosity. It could fail, it could work." Scouring flea markets in the morning and selling his finds in the afternoon, Van Cutsem said his shop is now the only one of its kind in Brussels.

While he is hopeful about increased foot traffic in the gallery, the antiques dealer is not convinced that the new visitors will be drawn to his store. His main concern is that large groups of tourists might enter his shop without appreciating the value of his goods, touching and breaking things, and behaving disrespectfully. "My shop is a mess, yes, but an organised mess," Van Cutsem jokes. Still, he is confident that his loyal customers will keep coming, regardless of what happens. "At the end of the day, I want what's best for the gallery."

As renovations continue, promotional posters in the gallery showcase its rebranding: ‘The culture of taste, the taste of culture'. People have continued to voice their discontent. On a poster, under the printed sentence ‘Le passé se conjugue au present’ – or ‘the past is conjugated in the present,’ somebody has sardonically scribbled: ‘…et s'efface devant le futur’ – or ‘And it fades before the future.’

OPER A

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This holiday season, Ariane Matiakh and Ivo van Hove bring Ingmar Bergman’s magnum opus to the opera stage.

Get cozy with a grand, heartwarming family saga, overflowing with vitality and imagination.

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THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 97

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Mu.ZEE makeover aims to redefine Ostend art hub Ostend’s Mu.ZEE houses the world’s largest collection of Belgian art, but it started out as a 1940s department store. Lisa Bradshaw visits the museum with the striking glass facade ahead of its threeyear closure for much-needed renovations

What is Belgian? We say it’s artists related to the Belgian cultural context.

Because you have artists who live here but have come from abroad, artists from the diaspora, especially Congo.

A

t any given time, around 90% of artworks held by museums around the world are hidden away out of view.

It seems a shame, all that art in storage. But every museum struggles to decide what comes out and when – decisions resulting in themed temporary exhibitions.

Mu.ZEE in Ostend, however, now has a different approach. While the museum does host temporary exhibitions, its permanent collection also changes every year. So the Mu.ZEE you saw last autumn is not the Mu.ZEE you’d see today.

“When I began working here, temporary exhibitions were the main focus, and the permanent collection was sort of seen as filling in the gaps,” says Mu.ZEE curator Mieke Mels. “It felt strange to me. For a long time, I didn’t even fully grasp what was in our permanent collection.”

With 8,000 pieces, Mu.ZEE – a museum dedicated to the last 150 years of Belgian art – has the largest collection of Belgian art in the world.

So over the last few years, the curatorial team changed their approach. “We decided to have the core of the building focused on the permanent collection,” Mels says.

Showing more The museum closed for a few months during the COVID crisis and re-opened with a striking change: the walls on the second floor

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were partially knocked down to create mezzanines that allow visitors to peer down to the first floor. Both floors are now devoted to the permanent collection, which hosts about 200 pieces at any given time.

One of the more daring decisions, however, was to axe the wings dedicated to James Ensor and Léon Spilliaert – not only two of the greatest Belgian artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, but both sons of Ostend. Some of their works are now mixed in with the rest of the collection.

“We wanted to stay true to the idea of showing more of our collection and establishing our identity as representing local art,” Mels says. “You can’t cover that with just Ensor and Spilliaert. There is so much more.”

This is no more evident than in Full House, the name given to the latest layout of the permanent collection. Spilliaert’s most famous self-portrait is on show, as are several drawings and engravings by Ensor. But the place of honour goes to contemporary artists.

“We try to think of what it means to have a collection of ‘Belgian artists,’” says Mels.

“What is Belgian? We say it’s artists related to the Belgian cultural context. Because you have artists who live here but have come from abroad, artists from the diaspora, especially Congo.”

Store-turned-museum The permanent collection on show has also shifted from a chronological journey through Belgian art to a thematic one. “Over the last few years, we experimented with a few things in consideration of what we might do in the future.

We have specific ideas about what we want to explore while we are closed.”

On January 6, Mu.ZEE will shut its doors for a full three years for a major restoration and renovation project. The building desperately needs to modernise to conform to museum standards in terms of temperature, light and humidity – not to mention its creaky old elevators – but also to offer more structural options for exhibitions and more social options for visitors.

That’s because the Mu.ZEE was not built to be a museum. It was built to be a department store.

The building on Romestraat went up in the 1940s and was designed by Gaston Eysselinck, the go-to architect for Spaarzaamheid Economie Oostende (Thrift Economy Ostend), the biggest cooperative West Flanders has ever known.

Growing from a 19th century provider of coal to offering an endless number of goods at affordable prices, Spaarzaamheid Economie Oostende (SEO) had outlets all over the city.

Its most iconic contribution, however, was this extension of several of its properties bordering Romestraat, with a dazzling curved glass and marble façade. It served as SEO headquar-

ters and the cooperative’s largest shopping outlet, selling everything from clothes to food to pharmaceuticals.

SEO went bankrupt in the early 1980s, and a few years later the province’s modern art collection moved into the building. In 2008, the collection of Ostend’s fine arts museum joined in, and Mu.ZEE was born. The building has been adapted in spits and spats to house precious artworks, but now it’s time for the big changes that will make it a top museum for the 21st century.

The view for visitors “It bothers me that you come in and immediately bump into this ticket desk,” says Mels. The entire entryway will be transformed into a more public-friendly space, with a new café and tile flooring. “It will be like a plaza, a public space.

Not just a place to sell you a ticket.”

The plan also includes re-inserting a large plate-glass window that was removed at the back of the building to allow for more natural light. Other infrastructure changes will allow visitors at the front of the museum to see clear to the back. The library will also be moved to the other side of the building, opening the third floor to workshops and an open atelier where visitors can watch art restorations live.

“That’s where my office is now, so I’ll have to move out,” says Mels with a smile. “It has the best view, so we’ll be giving that to the visitors.”

The Mu.ZEE was not built to be a museum. It was built to be a department store.

Left: the 1940s façade. Right: When it was still a shop

Full House: Mu.ZEE goes out with a flourish You’d be forgiven for thinking that Full House is a temporary exhibition at Mu.ZEE. Normally, the museum does not give the rotation of its permanent collection a title. But because it’s the museum’s last hurrah before closing in January for three years, the staff decided a special designation was in order.

Arranged by themes, Full House is largely dedicated to contemporary art – boldly, wildly so. Anchored with several monumental sculptural works, visitors entering the

exhibition spaces hardly know where to look first, or next.

Stand-out pieces include Freedom to Think of Things in Themselves, Valérie Mannaert’s massive sculpture reminiscent of a warrior tunic, and The Course of Empire, a nine-metre-long hand-tufted tapestry by Brazilian-born artist Elen Braga that ties the history of the world in with a sci-fi future. Braga is also responsible for the giant piranha hanging face down from the ceiling, ready to gobble up passersby.

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Big tops and beyond: Belgium’s thriving circus culture Belgium’s circus scene, with a vibrant fusion of traditional and contemporary acts, has become a worldrenowned hub for performance arts. From the historic Bouglione family, with their time-honoured big top shows, to avant-garde performances from international artists, the country hosts a flourishing community of circus schools and festivals, Richard Harris writes

T

he modern circus is viscerally enthralling. It might no longer have elephants, tigers or lions but it has artists who perform death-defying physical feats. They include aerial acrobats suspended in the air, spinning precariously on tightropes, on unicycles, or held by their partner’s hand grip. There are artists who engage in extreme contortion, bending and twisting their bodies into seemingly impossible shapes. And there are extreme jugglers who perform rapid complex routines, synchronising with other performers to create a magical hypnotic effect.

While the traditional circus is a spectacle of unrelated acts mostly performed under a travelling big top by a family whose craft is passed down through generations, the contemporary circus is more open in style and skill. Sometimes known as the new circus, its origins emerged in the 1970s in street theatre, with artists trained in circus schools or from sports or dance backgrounds.

The new circus keeps many traditional circus disciplines – acrobatics and manipulation of objects for instance – but gives them a more theatrical nature and highlights the artist’s contact with the audience. The show usually has a throughline, addressing spectators with a certain topic or problem, rather than just displaying unusual abilities.

Belgium is packed with circus and street theatre. There are 50 circus arts schools – some for children and some for adults seeking to make it their profession – and well over 150 circuses in the country.

The result is not only great street theatre but also free events featuring outstanding talent – like the Hopla! circus festival which takes over various Brussels neighbourhoods for a week in April, Festival Up! and Festival Zonder Handen.

Even the quality of the busking is monitored in Brussels: to get a permit, the prospective artist must have the appropriate artistic diploma or, if not, can appear in front of a monthly jury at city hall and audition.

Among the schools, the heavyweight is Ecole Supérieure des Arts du Cirque (ESAC) in Brussels, considered one of the top three schools in the world. Other major players include the Ecole du Cirque de Bruxelles located in one of the hangars at Tour et Taxis and with a second campus in Saint-Gilles.

In Ghent, the Circuscentrum supports and promotes the over 20 schools and 90 circuses in Flanders, while La Maison d'Alijn, a museum in Ghent, houses a prime collection of circus memorabilia. In Wallonia, support is provided

by Fédécirque. And Franco Dragone, the Belgian director and developer of the Cirque du Soleil, still has his headquarters in La Louvière.

The many schools are testimony to how today’s circus artist is not limited to one discipline and is often a clown, acrobat, magician, trapeze artist, storyteller, athlete, musician, singer, dancer and more.

Juan Manuel Cersosimo and Ricardo Delpine, of Che Cirque based in Brussels, illustrate this.

"Ricardo is crazy for music and I'm crazy for bicycles so we put our two passions together," says Cersosimo, describing their genre-defying act in which he plays music on handmade instruments while Delpine does perilous stunts on his bicycles. "We are tamers: I am taming bicycles and he is using bicycles to make musical instruments. We have a bass, cello, guitar, harp and percussion handmade with parts of bicycles. We replace tigers and lions with wheels and bikes."

The Belgian travelling circus has a rich history that spans centuries. Its origins can be found in the street theatre and fairs of the Middle Ages

The many schools are testimony to how today’s circus artist is not limited to one discipline and is often a clown, acrobat, magician, trapeze artist, storyteller, athlete, musician, singer, dancer and more.

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 103

become a huge part of the culture,” says Kevin Brooking, who came to teach clowning in Brussels 35 years ago from Kansas City in the US and never left.

Brooking says Belgium’s proficiency training helps raise the performance culture.

“When I started clowning 50 years ago, juggling five balls was considered amazing and five clubs as out of the question, but now tenyear-olds are juggling five clubs,” he says.

Another factor is money: Belgium funds circuses, circus schools and initiatives like the Belgian chapter of Clowns without Borders, which Brooking co-founded. Clowns without Borders performs in refugee centres and runs workshops for refugee children. “This brings up all the joy and creates a huge energy and positive light in an otherwise grave atmosphere,” he says. It also has a project in regular Belgian schools called Listen to Me When You Talk that helps children with conflict resolution and non-violent communication.

Street festivals

Tightrope walker and acrobats performing during the Hopla! festival

When it comes to events, Belgium is home to one of the world’s largest, oldest and mostrespected street theatre festivals: the Festival International des Arts de la rue de Chassepierre.

during which talented artists wowed the crowd with acrobatics, juggling and animal taming.

The first modern circus was created in London in 1768 by Philip Astley who went on to establish 18 other circuses in cities across Europe.

In Belgium circus shows evolved to include colourful marquees, decorated caravans and a variety of impressive acts, creating a circus tradition well-rooted in local culture. The fusion of music, elaborate costumes and spectacular sets added a theatrical dimension to the travelling circus, captivating an ever-growing audience.

The Brussels bond with circus arts even led to the raising of a statue of a clown, Heroic Pierrot, in 1924, on Square de l'Aviation, opposite the traditional Midi/Zuid fair (it was commissioned to commemorate fairground workers killed in the First World War).

Fertile ground Why is Belgium such fertile ground for the circus arts? “Belgian culture is very visual, probably in part due to the linguistic situation that means that movement, dance, visual arts have

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When it comes to events, Belgium is home to one of the world’s largest, oldest and most-respected street theatre festivals: the Festival International des Arts de la rue de Chassepierre, held every August. The village of Chassepierre in the Ardennes is closed to traffic for two days and becomes a giant outdoor theatre as the street and circus performers from around the world enthusiastically show up and give it their all.

Lessines, René Magritte’s hometown, also organises a very Belgian annual festival known as the Rallye de la Petite Reine (la petite reine, or little queen, was the French term for a bicycle at the turn of the 20th century, supposedly because Queen Wilhelmina ascended the throne of the Netherlands at the age of ten and popularized the use of the bicycle). To take part, festivalgoers ride a bicycle through the Lessines countryside stopping at ten locations including châteaux, quarries, riversides and even the historical, UNESCO-listed Hôpital de Notre-Dame de la Rose, where they are treated to circus acts put on by top international and Belgian troupes. If 25 km by bike is too much for you there is a little train.

Latitude 50, created in 2007, is officially the centre of circus and street arts for the Wallonia Brussels Federation for its activities oriented towards the public and towards professionals.

Based in rural Marchin, Latitude 50 hosts a dozen performances annually, co-organises street art festival Les Unes Fois d’un Soir in Huy and provides residency space to some 60 companies every year to develop their new creations.

About 150 artists come by every season to create their own show.

One of the many roaming shows, Circus Ronaldo stands out for its blend of theatre and circus. It started in 1842 when Adolf Peter Van den Berghe ran away from his home in Ghent

DAVID MURRAY QUARTET DE LOOZE, MORGAN, BARON, ROBERTS AMY GADIAGA CAMILLA GEORGE IRREVERSIBLE ENTAGLEMENTS FLOCK YOTIS IMMANUEL WILKINS QUARTET DISHWASHER_ CRAIG TABORN QUARTET & BRUSSELS PHILHARMONIC JAS KAYSER KHALAB

ALINA BZHEZHINSKA & MANY MORE

Photo © Johan Jacobs

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 105

In the beginning, they were bear trainers.

They came from Italy and crossed the Alps with bears. And then they had fairground menageries.

And then it was the circus.

Left: Juan Manuel Cersosimo of Che Cirque. Right: Kevin Brooking

at the age of 15 to join the circus. He went from stable boy to acclaimed equestrian acrobat and after crossing paths with a travelling theatre group and marrying one of the performers, he and his wife formed their own company, which was eventually named Ronaldo. Performed by generations of the same family, over the past 25 years they have toured the world, but still fit in performances in small Flemish villages and

Top: The Chassepierre festival. Bottom: Bouglione circus

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towns, and were recently named as a Flanders Cultural Ambassador.

Traditional big top For the classic experience under a big top, orchestrated by a ringmaster, and perfumed by fresh popcorn, Belgium boasts Cirque Alexandre Bouglione, a bastion of the traditional circus.

This year is the 125th anniversary of the Bouglione family’s arrival in Brussels and their big top is mounted by the Atomium for November after which they set up on Place Flagey for December, offering completely different shows in the two locations.

Alexander Bouglione, seventh generation, started as a bear trainer. “In the beginning, they were bear trainers. They came from Italy and crossed the Alps with bears. And then they had fairground menageries. And then it was the circus,” he says.

Bouglione limits himself to just October to December. For the spring and summer his son Nicolas tours Belgium with Cirque Nicolas Bouglione and his daughter Anouchka tours in North America with her circus Cirque de Paris

by Anouchka Bouglione.

Bouglione prefers the traditional circus, but he does have contemporary acts in the current show, and he has some performers who are not members of a performing family. About a quarter of his performers come from schools, and the rest are from generations of circus families.

“I have the Garcia family. They've also been doing the circus for 200 years. They're mixed, they're half Irish, half Spanish so they also perform as the Fawcett Circus in Ireland and England.”

While his time on the road is now only three months in the year, he has stuck with life in an archetypal travelling circus caravan. “I live in my caravan,” he says. “I'm going to be 69 in a few days. I don't want to build a house at 69.

The caravan is good. We were born in caravans.

We're gypsies. This is our custom.”

P E I R E M U Z E E

Immerse yourself in the magical world of Luc Peire.

@Peiremuzee Knokke-Heist De Judestraat 64 Knokke-Heist

www.peiremuzee.be

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 107

vorm © Kaat Flamey - Foto: Yvan Mahieu

The Belgian visionary master of abstract verticality.

The whole sky in the countryside is bigger A child spends weekends in the countryside with their father, exploring and digging for treasures, but the innocence of play is soon shattered. Elisabetta Giromini won the Writers Festival of Belgium 2024 short story competition with this tale of family tensions, violence and a dark realisation

108 | THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE

T

he smell of dry earth and dirt on my hands, hard to wash off. Nails breaking, a hint of salt and iron on my tongue. I click it, like a galloping horse.

Insects, worms, drinking from Dad's canteen attached to his work bag. That water tastes like dust and heat. I trace a caravan of ants with my finger. Mom is never with us when we go to the countryside. Dad takes me on his scooter; I sit behind him, clinging to his belly. His shirt fills with wind and flaps against my face.

It's usually Sunday, and Mom isn’t around. At the mall, weekends don’t exist. My favourite moment: snack time, chips and Coke. I bring a small rake and a shovel in my backpack. I dig, looking for pieces of pottery, stones. I draw maps, and Dad is always at the centre, pruning the fruit trees to prepare them for harvest. The sun overhead, eyes squinting from the light when it's already noon. I like to watch him. He looks back, What are you staring at? He doesn’t like it when I stare.

So I go back to digging.

I have this flaw: I notice a lot. I look and I’m all eyes. And then I like to mess around with my hands, I grab dirt and put it in my mouth; it tastes a bit bitter and salty.

When we're at home, I see so much of Mom when she comes back from work. She looks at me, grabs me by the arms, and then wipes the dirt off my face. It doesn’t really hurt, but a little bit. Then she snaps and goes looking for my dad, who’s in front of the TV with a beer in hand. She waves her arms in the air, pacing back and forth.

He keeps staring at the screen. I’m not sure if my dad understands her language, who knows what she’s saying to him. At some point, he gets up and slaps her so hard she falls to the ground. I guess she said something he didn’t like.

My father was a quick blow in my life. I used to hope he would hit my mother, right through her chest, and I’d see the blood. Like in the movies. Because no one really dies, right? My mother always makes him angry, she gets agitated, waves her arms, pacing back and forth. But instead, the blow stopped in the metallic blue of the car door, turned into a nail, stuck there, on my first day of elementary school.

Mom comes to pick me up after all the other kids had already gone. She says, "Enough!" placing her flat hand over her fist and moving it downward, as if wiping something away. I sit properly in the front seat. I still have my backpack on, and she hurriedly fastens my seatbelt.

We don’t go home; we drive to the countryside. My mother never comes to the countryside.

I have to wait in the car, and she gets out. I watch her through the window, gesturing, shaking.

There’s always so much light here, a bigger light, the whole sky in the countryside is bigger, it hurts your eyes. My father is holding something. He stretches out his arm. I feel the vibration through the door. The blow stops. A pressure in my ear, like when a door slams from the wind. The nail.

Maybe I should start digging, nails breaking, finding worms. Maybe if I dig deep

enough, I can hide.

Dad yells words I can’t hear. I see it in the way he opens his mouth, the way he grinds his teeth. I want to draw him at the centre of the map. Hang him on the nail in the car door. With his hat dripping sweat.

My mother is still now. He’s pointing the gun at her, like in the movies. We’ve played with it with Dad, he even let me hold it. It’s the only game he wants to play with me. His arm is fully extended towards her, aiming at her chest. Mom isn’t moving anymore. We know Dad has a gun, that it’s on the living room table next to the beer, or in the bedroom nightstand. He brings it with him in his work bag along with the little white packets. Deep down, Dad doesn’t even like the countryside, but it’s a good place for work.

We need to get out of this Hell, Mom told me before getting out of the car. She made the horns pointing downward, in sign language. Hell is down below, underground. My mother, who can't stand the countryside, the dirt, is washing my clothes. Stay here. How did we end up coming to him?

I’ve figured out what Dad wants. What they both want. They want me to dig the deep hole where we’ll sleep, because they can’t do it themselves. Because night is coming, and you need to rest. Just as I unbuckle my seatbelt, open the car door, I understand. I see Mom from behind.

Even now, as I step on the dry earth, the sun is setting. It doesn’t matter; I have to squint. I like the purple that fills the sky, and the red. The sun is like a stain that’s too bright, and if I stare at it, I get ants in my eyes.

Dad looks at me, moves his arm toward me.

He’s still pointing the gun; it’s just like in the movies, we’re all pretending. I take a few steps forward. Got it, I sign to him, touching my temple with my fist, index finger pointing up. Got it.

Now I’m going to start digging, like I always do when I come to the countryside. Maybe Mom can start digging with me. Then we’ll go to sleep. But Dad never learned sign language. I always stare at him, and he doesn’t like it when I do. What are you staring at?

The backpack falls. Ants in my eyes, in my mouth, a blanket of legs. Underground, I'm thirsty.

My favourite moment: snack time, chips and Coke. I bring a small rake and a shovel in my backpack.

I dig, looking for pieces of pottery, stones.

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The hidden keepers of saintly histories Few people know about Bollandists, the religious group behind the world’s most authoritative collection of works on saints. Rory Watson meets the society’s director and the woman charged with raising awareness of the Bollandists

Pope Francis visiting the Bollandists in September

D

uring his official visit to Belgium in September, Pope Francis did something none of his many illustrious predecessors have ever done: he visited a little-known library in Etterbeek called Biblioteca Bollandiana, and blessed its collection.

The library hosts half a million books, over one thousand periodicals and a similar number of manuscripts. The Society of Bollandists, Belgium’s oldest learned society, has amassed the collection over four centuries for its mission of critical hagiography work:

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the study of the lives of saints.

“It was the first ever papal visit to the Bollandists in 400 years,” notes Robert Godding, director of the society.

The Bollandists’ work covers several academic disciplines: theology, hagiography, linguistics and history, revealing insights not just on saints, but on topics that are of interest to a wide variety of experts, including anthropologists and political scientists. Their scholarship is international, but their roots very Belgian.

These date back to 1607 when Heribert

Rosweyde, a Jesuit in Antwerp, decided to publish early texts on the lives of saints. Some decades later, Jean Bolland (hence the name), a fellow Jesuit, continued Rosweyde’s ambitious project.

300 years of quiet study More than three centuries of diligent research later, the most authoritative collection of works on saints was published in 1940: the 67-volume Acta Sanctorum, with detailed studies of all saints in Eastern and Western Christianity.

Almost six decades previously, the journal Analecta Bollandiana was launched. Though initially seen as a complement to the Acta Sanctorum series, the journal soon acquired a life of its own, with articles by Bollandists and other scholars. The publication is the only academic journal exclusively dedicated to the study of Latin, Greek, ancient Eastern and modern hagiography.

Over the centuries, the Bollandists have weathered excommunication by the Spanish Inquisition, revolutionary turmoil, pillage of the original library, expulsion and 40 years of total suppression. Their travails and travels have taken them from Antwerp to the Coudenberg monastery in Brussels, to Tongerlo and back to Brussels.

Near the end of the 19th century, a new Society of Bollandists was formed under the patronage of the Belgian government. In 1905, they moved the library to a building in the Romanesque Saint Michel College complex near Square Montgomery in Etterbeek where it still stands today (some visitors compare the imposing architecture to Harry Potter's Hogwarts school). Until 1987, only Jesuits could be Bollandists, but now lay members are also eligible.

Despite their lengthy physical presence in Belgium, the Bollandists and their independent centre of critical research are largely un-

known in the country, and even among the wider Jesuit community. One of the few physical references to their existence is the Rue des Bollandistes, which is near the library.

It was reliable funding from the church that allowed them to continue their work in peaceful anonymity, which was welcome and conducive to scholarship.

Father Robert began working with the Bollandists in 1990, and he remembers the dictum at the time: “A secret life is a happy life.”

“Bollandists have always cultivated discretion, confident that the quality of their work was the best guarantee for the institution’s reputation,” he explains. “There was no need to make a big noise.”

Additionally, the library is only available to visitors undertaking fundamental research, and not to the general public. “If you are researching hagiography, there is no doubt this is the best place.”

Today, however, there is a growing recognition that the society, which has had only 70 Bollandists throughout its entire history, must modernise and become more proactive.

Updating Bollandists Several factors are driving this understanding. The first is money: the society receives no public funding and church finances are now under pressure from other demands.

American Jesuit Joseph Koczera, who teaches in Rome, has been collaborating with the Bollandists on various projects over the past year. On funding, he says the challenge, “is always to persuade people that there is something worth supporting and to connect our needs with the interests of potential benefactors.”

The second factor is that the Bollandists’ research has traditionally been medieval and Eurocentric. Now, they are extending their focus to modern and contemporary saints canonised over the last 500 years, including

Bollandists have always cultivated discretion, confident that the quality of their work was the best guarantee for the institution’s reputation.

Left: The library. Right: The Saint Michel College, where the Bollandists are based

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We are behind every book on saints for the wider public, but they don’t see that.

Without us to collect the documents, the authors could not do their work.

saints in diverse parts of the world, such as Korea, Uganda and Latin America.

The inclusion of modern saints helps shape the vision of the society’s relevance to the future, which must also adapt to 21st century realities. For example, all donations to the Bollandist Fund are channelled through the King Baudouin Foundation, which enables donors to support the society in a tax-efficient way.

The third factor driving imminent change is the society’s desire to share the Bollandists’ research with a wider audience. This is already being made possible by the growing use of electronic databases that allow access to the library’s contents to researchers all over the world.

Le Fonds Baillet Latour, a Belgian non-profit organisation, recently financed a €538,000 project, now successfully completed with the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), to digitally catalogue 22,000 of the society’s books published before 1800.

However, some two-thirds of the library are still catalogued on specialised card indexes.

Advancing the mission Moves to make the Bollandists more contemporary began in 2017 with the appointment of Irini de Saint Sernin, a multilingual Greek Orthodox mother of three, to the new post of external relations and development manager. From the outset, she was clear about her role.

“Advancement. How do I advance the Bollandists’ mission and cause?” she explains.

“We are behind every book on saints for the

wider public, but they don’t see that. Without us to collect the documents, the authors could not do their work.”

Saint Sernin has raised the Bollandists’ visibility by introducing a Facebook page that now has 8,500 followers, overseeing the development of a new website, commissioning articles, speaking regularly to many different audiences about the society’s work and contacting possible benefactors. Wider awareness of the Bollandists would also come if UNESCO grants the society’s request for Memory of the World status for the Acta Sanctorum and the archives used to compile them.

Father Joseph asks whether the Bollandists could capitalise more from their presence in Brussels – the heart of the European Union – in their search for a broader audience. He names six saints considered patrons of Europe: Saint Benedict of Nursia, Saint Bridget of Sweden, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) and Saints Cyril and Methodius, apostles to the Slavic nations.

“We have this diversity of figures. What can they offer today in a contemporary context marked by pluralism, secularisation and diversity? Is there something worth sharing and talking about their examples? I think people are looking for models which saints are meant to be,” he explains.

When Arturo Sosa, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, visited Belgium in September, he made the connection between the society and the EU, emphasising the importance of the European project and urging his audience to recognise and appreciate the EU’s role as a beacon of peace, solidarity and co-responsibility, not just among its members, but for the entire world.

Remaining relevant

Left: Frontispiece of the Acta Sanctorum. Top right: Library shelves. Right: Above the library door

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As the Bollandists widen their horizons, Father Joseph emphasises they have always embraced innovation.

“The Bollandists have had two important moments in their history. The first, in the 17th century, was the Acta Sanctorum with the launch of its highly exhaustive critical study of the saints. The second was in the late 19th century when they started a journal to remain at the cutting edge and engage with scholars in a more effective way. Now, in the 21st century, is another of those moments with a call to adapt and remain at the forefront of what we are doing.”

He sees the Pope’s recent visit as hugely significant. From the vast network of Catholic activities in Belgium, the only apostolic work of the Jesuits he visited was the Bollandists’ library. “I think it shows that he cares about it personally, recognises its importance and wants it to continue,” Father Joseph says.

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Tram 10, from the Military Hospital to Churchill It is not often that Brussels builds a new tram line. Tram 10, inaugurated by King Philippe in September, connects the northern neighbourhood of Neder-Over-Heembeek to the rest of the city. Hugh Dow tests the new tracks from Churchill in Uccle, through the Nord-Midi underground, along the canal, into the medieval heart of Neder-OverHeembeek and to the terminus at the Military Hospital THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 115

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I was cordially invited to ride the inaugural tram 10 journey with none other than King Phillippe.

Let me qualify that. He rode in the first tram with his entourage and we toilers in Grub Street followed behind in another.

eder-Over-Heembeek is a strangely cut-off part of Brussels, hemmed in, as it is, by the ring road to the north, the canal to the south and the old A12 to Antwerp.

An outlying village of medieval Brussels, it bears the distinction of having the oldest recorded name of any place in the Brussels area – 7th century no less. Two parishes developed around two churches: Neder (lower) and Over (upper) Heembeek. The communities were combined in 1814, but rather than settle for the simple Heembeek name, each opted to keep their prefixes; and so the village became Lower-Upper Heembeek. Heavy industrialisation along the canal-side, being forcibly subsumed into the commune of Brussels in 1921, and having neither a railway station nor a tram service all helped create a certain sense of isolation.

Strolling around the town centre one Wednesday, the village-y atmosphere was palpable: young children walking home from school on their own, a modest restaurant with unreconstructed and unironic 1940s decor serving very standard Belgian fare, people stopping to talk casually in the street, in a crowded café, the barman taking the time to get a social update from every customer who enters, and perhaps a bit more Dutch than elsewhere in Brussels.

The Brussels transport company STIB-MIVB, the Brussels commune, and NOH (as it is widely known) residents, all partook in a plan to create a new tramline, with 10 new stops from the A12 (Heembeek) up to the very top of the hilly village at the Military Hospital hard by the ring road. This involved much gentrification of the main route through the town, trees being planted, wildlife access improved, and state-of-the-art tram stops (easy access for the disabled and mothers with baby buggies). All this was done in record time and ahead of schedule.

I was cordially invited to ride the inaugural tram 10 journey with none other than

King Phillippe.

Let me qualify that. He rode in the first tram with his entourage and we toilers in Grub Street followed behind in another.

It was a beautiful Indian summer’s day in late September, the air still and the sky clear, as we waited at the glistening, new terminus at the Military Hospital in Neder-Over-Hembeek. The journalists, slightly untidy with their spiral notebooks and cameras hanging off them, and the courtiers, by contrast, looking very county indeed, stood quite separately at either end of the platform.

The sun shone, the traffic thundered around the ring road, a small crowd of curious onlookers gathered, and the Mayor of Brussels, Phillippe Close, crossed the divide between the First and Fourth Estates and worked the crowd - shaking my hand en passant but not giving me time to say who I was - or perhaps I lacked the presence of mind!

The King arrived with his entourage on time and at great speed, was greeted by the mayor, and climbed into the first tram without further ado.

I later read that the King was at the controls. Technically His Majesty, indeed all of us, simply travelled the first four stops and then, well, stopped. This took us to the centre of Heembeek. Onlookers lined the way sporadically and clapped as the trams went past; a novel experience for me. I resisted waving.

There was a festive crowd in the main square and the entrepreneurial local frituur/friterie had opened early. Involving the residents in the whole project clearly paid off.

As for me, I decided that the best way to experience the new line was to do the whole journey from Churchill at the other end and thus work my way back to the north.

Start again at Churchill The weather had turned autumnal by the time I got around to it. Churchill, deep in Uccle, has a slightly curious arrangement

Left: King Philippe pilots the tram on the opening day. Right: At one end, the Winston Churchill terminus. Previous pages: Place Peter Benoit

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Left: Avenue Albert. Right: Alongside the canal

whereby trams pass right through on the diameter of the roundabout while a brace of 10s await custom on the circumference.

The first stop is Vanderkindere, a longish street for which I have a certain affection. It is littered with smart clothes shops, small restaurants and delicatessens to die for.

There is something heart-warmingly European about a de facto open-air mall, otherwise known as a street, with lots of small shops - not outlets - which have simply evolved organically from the days when people bought locally. Always worth a stroll.

The tram then heads down the middle of the handsome. tree-lined Avenue Albert, which boasts grand Art Nouveau and Beaux-Arts mansions, before plunging underground at the eponymous Albert station.

For the next four stations, the tram appears to be taking a Stygian plunge ever deeper to the centre of the Earth. In fact, the topography above is steadily downhill and the tram simply follows the trajectory. Some of the stations here are quite beautiful. Albert itself is white tiled (and has the unique distinction of having a platform on a slope), Parvis de Saint-Gilles-Sint-Gillisvoorplein blue and Porte de Hal-Hallepoort red. And then there is Midi-Zuid Station.

That the Midi tram station lacks the elan of some others is fitting enough. The railway station above it is not a welcoming place. The main hall is dark and gloomy, the shadows an invitation to the indigent, the outlets perfunctory and corporate and the policing lacks leadership (there is confusion about who’s in charge). To make matters worse, the areas outside are often bleak spaces without charm or commercial endeavour. None of this is helped by the never-ending works on the new metro line 3 station just nearby.

There are increasing calls for something to be done about it. After all, this is where international passengers arrive from the jazzed-up Gare du Nord in Paris and the magnificently restored St Pancras in London with its hi-tone shopping. I am deeply proud of my

adopted city - but there is work to be done!

Talking of work done, the tram passes under Boulevard Anspach. This area has been mightily improved, is no longer traffic-clogged and has horse-trough-shaped mini-flower gardens here and there. Place Broukère-De Brouckèreplein has been likewise cleaned up and is a much more relaxing place to be. I can thoroughly recommend taking public transport into the city centre on a Saturday night, wandering around, looking for something toothsome to eat and drink, possibly visit one of the three multi-screened cinemas in the area, or even one of the three legit theatres if you speak French or Dutch.

All are well within easy walking distance.

I recall an elderly French lady, brought up right on the border with Belgium before the Second World War, telling me that back in the day they looked up to Brussels as “une ville sortante” – which more or less translates as a buzzy town. As the city elders slowly squeeze the car from the centre of the city, perhaps her ghost will be nodding in quiet approval.

At the Bourse, if so inclined, you may exit and visit Belgian Beer World housed in the 1876 Stock Exchange. The bar at the top is spectacular with its view over Brussels’ medieval centre – a view to which no 14th century ‘ketje’ could possibly aspire; not least because the building wasn’t there!

There is something heart-warmingly European about a de facto open-air mall, otherwise known as a street, with lots of small shops - not outlets - which have simply evolved organically from the days when people bought locally.

Canal cruise At Gare du Nord-Noordstation, the tram emerges from the tunnel and runs parallel, first to the railway embankment, then to the canal.

The Mabru tram stop, halfway along the tram’s sojourn beside the canal, is a syllabic abbreviation for Market Brussels. This is because, on the other side of the road from the water, there is a 14-hectare site which houses something rather magical. It is Brussels’, and indeed Belgium’s, principal wholesale food market.

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Left: Passing by Docks Bruxsel. Centre: The tower of the original of Saint Peter and Paul church. Right: Saint-Nicolas church

On the edge of the park, there is a neat little structure which looks a bit like stables - regular doors three metres apart. It is, in fact, the 15th century Hospice of the Five Wounds of Christ which was neatly restored in the 1960s. It never occurred to me that there were hospices in medieval times – or maybe I had just never thought about it.

It moved from the Grand Place, where it had been since time immemorial, only in 1973 and now comprises some 110 businesses and welcomes about 22,000 customers a week. It trades in fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, flowers, wine – pretty much anything comestible – with people in the trade. It opens, depending on the day, from midnight through to 4pm and closes only on a Sunday. Merchants come to Mabru from not only all over Belgium but northern France and southern Netherlands as well. Visitors are welcome under certain strict conditions (Horeca students only in their fifth year of study, says the website severely - so no dilettantes, then) and with a guide. Not as romantic as its Grand Place predecessor, perhaps, but far more practical.

Abutting this, and at the next stop up, is Docks Bruxsel - a newish, mid-level shopping centre. It prides itself on its green credentials with solar panels, rainwater collection for plants and cleaning, and a roof which can ventilate in the summer. More importantly, it is well served by trams 7, 3 and, of course, now 10. The stores are standard high street but the eating choices are extensive and imaginative. Further, there is a cobbled courtyard at canal level which, as I rushed through last week, seemed both characterful and fun with its street food stalls. It has a cinema (White) with eight screens and a sittable-at bar. On my visits there when I lived nearby, I found it efficient, clean and friendly.

The tram then swings over the canal and reaches the stop Heembeek where it veers right into Heembeek proper. This is the first of the new 10 stops climbing up the hill to the Military Hospital. I get off at the main square, Peter Benoit, dominated by New Church of Saint Peter and Paul, a striking 1935 Art Deco construction.

Castle, hospice and warehouses I wander down the hill to a small park by the canal. It comprises the old grounds of the 17th century castle, the Château de Meudon, now long demolished and its ruins turned into

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Park Meudon. A small village just outside the capital must have been an uncomfortable place to be as it violently changed hands between the Spanish, the Burgundians, the Austrians, the French and the Dutch. The need for robust defence was self-evident. Indeed, just two streets away, a small church on a cobbled hill deserves mention: Saint-Nicolas, built in the Baroque style in the 17th century after the original 12th century church was destroyed by troops in 1489.

On this wettish day, when I strolled through the park, it was a haven of quiet: 10 acres of glistening, dripping trees. Google Maps appeared to indicate large buildings between the park and the canal. I follow a finger of green to the thundering canal side road.

There, somewhat to my surprise, is a massive warehouse, with some 15 loading bays half-adozen of which have lorries at them, belonging to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Not only that but the grass verge, between the fence and the road, has been recently rewilded. I raise my eyes to salute the kindly gods of charitable endeavour.

At the north end of this 500-metre-long building is a weird structure, a sort of tower made of red brick. Not defensive but some kind of 17th century warehouse, I’m guessing. The windows and doors have all been blocked up and information is not to be had.

The structure is slowly being covered with ivy and serves as a ghostly reminder of how long the Brussels area has been a major commercial centre. Round the back of it is a 1950s office building with a couple of cars parked outside. It is the Brussels and Brabant Food Bank warehouse. Heembeek appears to be a focal point for charitable distribution.

I wander uphill along a weed-strewn cobbled road to a 12th century tower which used to belong to the original church of Saint Peter and Paul. Unfortunately, the church itself was struck by lightning in 1932 and burned to the ground (hence the new one in the main square). There is some archaeological evidence of an even older building. This is remarkable as before the 12th century, most churches tended to be wooden.

On the edge of the park, there is a neat

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I walk up to the Military Hospital the main entrance of which is but 20 metres away. I enter unchallenged by the fatigueclad soldiers at the front desk and head for the Belgian Museum of Radiology which is signposted with unmilitary lack of clarity.

little structure which looks a bit like stables regular doors three metres apart. It is, in fact, the 15th century Hospice of the Five Wounds of Christ which was neatly restored in the 1960s. It never occurred to me that there were hospices in medieval times – or maybe I had just never thought about it. So much history and so many good works hidden around every corner.

I climb back on the tram to travel to its destination: the Military Hospital on the summit of the hill, over Over-Heembeek if you will. It skirts the sizable, one square kilometre nature reserve calling itself Val du Bois du Beguine/Begiunenbosdaal.

This used to belong to the Grande Beguinage de Bruxelles and in the 18th century was home to small farms, scattered woodlands and vegetable gardens for the local Heembeek villages. Rapid industrialisation along the canal in the late 19th century led to better wages and the abandonment of marginal land.

The area was rewilded before anyone knew the term and serves as a lung of green right inside the Brussels ring road. It also links up seamlessly with Vilvoorde’s much larger Drie Fonteinen park across the language border in Flanders. This helps the biodiversity of both flora and fauna neither of which are greatly bothered by linguistic niceties.

Soldiers and radiology At the final stop, I walk up to the Military Hospital the main entrance of which is but 20 metres away. I enter unchallenged by the fatigue-clad soldiers at the front desk and head

Left: Hospice of the Five Wounds of Christ. Right: The Military Hospital terminus

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for the Belgian Museum of Radiology which is sign-posted with unmilitary lack of clarity.

The museum exhibitions were largely closed off but I did learn something about the X-ray pioneer, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen. He discovered X-rays in December 1895 after seven weeks of assiduous work during which he had studied a new type of radiation able to pass through solids. He named them X-rays to underline the fact that their nature was then unknown. His wife and test subject, on seeing the skeleton of her own hand, shouted in alarm “I have seen my own death!”

I was also aware that somewhere in this large edifice is a state-of-the-art burns unit.

This demands a constant temperature and humidity in the 26 rooms capable of handling serious cases. The hospital will accept civilians when necessary – as indeed it did during the COVID epidemic when it provided quarantine wards.

The new line is exciting to think about.

Here are 10 tram stops built not merely to carry people but to revive a community. Ease of transport means better-paid jobs and better access to the cultural, sporting and quaffing opportunities which a large city can offer.

The economic effect on Heembeek should be wholly beneficial. And – whisper, who dares?

- maybe in a couple of decades the good citizens of NOH might say to the échevins of Brussels, “Ehm, excuse me. Could we maybe, if you don’t mind terribly, sorry for asking, maybe get our commune back, please? Pretty please! If it’s not too much trouble.” Who knows?

Photo © Caroline Thirion

La Commission communautaire française présente

# cinemamed24

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WEEKEND BREAK

Battlefields and beyond in Bastogne In the Ardennes, near the Luxembourg border, Bastogne is a time warp to the Second World War, particularly in winter as it commemorates the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. Angela Dansby embarks on a weekend of history

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The Bastogne War Museum, opened in 2014 and expanded in 2022, is the perfect place to begin a tour, giving an excellent overview of World War II, particularly the Battle of the Bulge, as heard through four historical characters.

Interactive, digital displays and three multisensorial films with 3D stage settings give vivid information about the battle and period.

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estled deep in the Ardennes, Bastogne combines poignant history with peaceful natural beauty.

The picturesque forest enveloping it belies the bloody past. The town is synonymous with the Battle of the Bulge – or the Ardennes Offensive – which was the last throw of the dice by the Nazis against the Allies in the Second World War in late 1994.

Today, Bastogne is effectively a large, open-air museum. Military memorials and relics can be found across the city, from an M4 Sherman tank in Place McAuliffe to monuments commemorating soldiers and others who helped with the Allied effort.

The tributes are moving and sombre, reflecting a grim history that still casts a shadow over the area today.

Bastogne was the base of the 101st Airborne Division during the brutal battle. At one point, the besieged acting commander, US Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, was handed a German ultimatum to surrender. In an episode that has gained almost mythical status, McAuliffe replied simply, “Nuts!” The division held on until support arrived, and the Allies eventually repelled the Nazis.

The six-week battle, including the intense Siege of Bastogne, lasted until January 25, 1945. It was the largest and bloodiest battle US soldiers fought during the Second World War, with around 90,000 killed, wounded or missing. The US Army describes it as “arguably the greatest battle in American military history.” More than one million soldiers took part in the campaign in all, with the Germans suffering up to 105,000 casualties.

The cold added to the gruelling conditions, with temperatures falling to 15-20 C° below zero. The battle was memorably dramatised

The Sherman tank in Place McAuliffe

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in Band of Brothers, the Stephen Spielberg/ Tom Hanks 2001 mini-series, itself based on Stephen Ambrose’s non-fiction book.

Visitors should know that the town no longer has a train station. To reach Bastogne from Brussels, take a train to Liège, Marloie or Libramont and transfer by bus to complete the journey. The fastest routes are about three hours. Driving cuts travel time in half. Otherwise, a local guide can be hired via bastogne-tourisme.be, who can drive to various sites and embellish their history.

Military museums The Bastogne War Museum, opened in 2014 and expanded in 2022, is the perfect place to begin a tour, giving an excellent overview of World War II, particularly the Battle of the Bulge, as heard through four historical characters. Interactive, digital displays and three multisensorial films with 3D stage settings give vivid information about the battle and period. A new immersive part of the museum’s extension called Generations45 follows in the footsteps of an American and a German veteran from the end of the war in 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

It also has an engaging, 20-minute film. The museum entry fee includes access to Generations45, an audio guide and Le Bois Jacques battlefield (for €5 more, access to the Bastogne War Rooms is also included). Outside the museum are artfully painted old cars, a slice of the Berlin Wall and contemporary artworks. There is also a café overlooking the Mardasson Memorial and a shop with military-related items.

Le Bois Jacques – or Jack’s Wood – in the village of Foy some 4km from the Bastogne War Museum is where the most intense fighting occurred during the Siege of Bastogne. It still has visible foxholes that US soldiers dug and fought from in the harsh winter. An augmented reality mobile app drives home the horror of the place in a fenced area.

The Bastogne War Rooms opened in early 2024 in the former permanent headquarters of the 101st Airborne Division during the Battle of the Bulge. They take visitors back to that time with interactive displays and a high-tech re-enactment of the moment when McAuliffe said and wrote “Nuts!” in the cellar.

The restored Bastogne Barracks near the War Rooms house around 100 military vehicles, including tanks, and pieces of artillery and equipment from the primary countries involved in World War II. They include “Mechanised Warfare” and “Battle of the Bulge” (new in 2022) warehouses as well as a Vehicle Restoration Centre.

The 101st Airborne Museum in a former German military officers’ mess and under-

ground shelter recounts the Battle of the Bulge from the perspective of the US paratroopers. It includes a bombing simulator, dioramas, historical videos, personal stories and many artefacts.

Memorials While there are many memorials in Bastogne, here are those not to miss.

Mardasson Memorial is a huge, starshaped monument next to the Bastogne War Museum that honours the tens of thousands of American soldiers who were killed or wounded in the Battle of the Bulge. A stone in its centre has inscribed in Latin "The Belgian people remember their American Liberators." On its walls are engravings of every US military unit involved, each US state and the story of the battle. Inaugurated in 1950 and restored before the 75th anniversary of the battle in 2019, the temple-like structure was designed by Belgian architect Georges Dedoyard. Its rooftop can be accessed via a spiral staircase, but it is currently closed due to restoration. A crypt below the esplanade displays a triptych of colourful mosaics representing Catholic, Protestant and Jewish religions. At the foot of the pathway leading to the memorial is a stone sculpture of a screaming eagle, the emblem of the 101st Airborne Division.

On the road from the Bastogne War Museum to Le Bois Jacques is the 101st Airborne Division’s Company E Memorial. It lists the names of company men who died in the area and tells the story of what they endured.

Fortress Boggess, also called Bunker Assenois, on the outskirts of Bastogne commemorates the 4th Armored Division joining the 101st Airborne Division on December 26, 1944, which enabled pushing back the Germans. The small, concrete bunker tributes Lieutenant Charles Boggess, who commanded the first tank that broke through the encirclement.

Monuments to key figures in the Allied effort are dotted throughout Bastogne. Notably, McAuliffe Monument, created by the sister of Belgium’s ambassador to the US at that time, was inaugurated by the general himself shortly after the war, and the square in which his bust sits was renamed after him in 1947. Patton Monument in the nearby village of Fauvillers, flanked by US and Belgian flags, includes a stone carving of the general’s face and a large, stone star in the ground.

It was inaugurated in 1963 in the presence of his grandson.

Le Bois de la Paix (Woods of Peace) in the village of Bizory honours fallen US soldiers with small signposts and 4,000 types of trees as well as military divisions with plaques in the ground. Thousands of trees were planted in their honour by a local committee of

Bastogne War Museum

UNICEF for the 50th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. Viewed from above, the trees form the shape of UNICEF’s emblem of mother and child. The woods also recognise via a panel and three trees the Martyred Cities of Peace, including Bastogne and nine other European cities.

Voie de la Liberté (Freedom Trail) marks every kilometre of 1,147 of the Allied forces’ route from the Normandy beaches in France on D-Day to Bastogne in December 1944. The last three markers are in Bastogne: next to the Sherman tank in Place McAuliffe (used by the 11th Armored Division during the Battle of the Bulge), outside Anim’Jeunes (Youth House) and the road leading to the Bastogne War Museum. Each red, white and blue marker shows the flaming torch of liberty emerging from the sea eastward and 48 stars representing the-then 48 United States.

The Nurses of Bastogne Memorial, a 2015 addition to the area’s commemorations, honours two ‘Angels of Bastogne’, Renée LeMaire and Augusta Chiwy, who volunteered to care for US soldiers during the Siege of Bastogne. Both worked in an aid station that was bombed on December 24, 1944. LeMaire and 30 soldiers were killed. A plaque commemorating them is on the site of the former aid station (now a large restaurant called Cite Wok) about a block from Place McAuliffe. Chiwy, who lived until 2015, is buried near Lemaire in the cemetery across the street from the Bastogne Barracks. Next to the nurses’ memorial is the turret of a tank used by the US 10th Armored Division’s Combat Command B, the first major unit to defend Bastogne.

The village of Recogne switched between American and German control during World War II so it was chosen as the burial place

Monuments to key figures in the Allied effort are dotted throughout Bastogne.

Notably, McAuliffe Monument, created by the sister of Belgium’s ambassador to the US at that time, was inaugurated by the general himself shortly after the war, and the square in which his bust sits was renamed after him in 1947.

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Top: December 1944. Above: January 1945

Port de Trèves, a square stone tower, is the last remaining piece of medieval fortifications that once surrounded the city. It was originally built as a gateway in 1332 but converted into a prison and temporary refuge in the late 1600s until World War I.

for both in 1945. But in 1948, the US soldiers were repatriated back home or transferred to other European burial sites. The Recogne German Military Cemetery remains with black stone crosses marking the graves of about 6,800 soldiers from the battle. Nearby is the Foy American Temporary Cemetery Memorial recognising the US soldiers who used to be buried there. Close to Recogne is another memorial honouring Native American soldiers who lost their lives during the battle (inaugurated for its 50th anniversary).

The heavily damaged Foy Chapel, now restored, has a plaque recognising Alden Todd and Frank Marchese, soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division, who took an altar bell and bible, respectively, from the church during the war as spiritual souvenirs. Todd returned the bell in person in 1984 and Marchese, Jr. the bible on behalf of his father in 2024. The memorial monument recognises the US soldiers who participated in “unusually violent fighting” in nearby Jacques’ Woods. Across the street in Sargent Joseph Madona Square in an old house with damage from the war, including bullet holes.

Houmont Church has two memorials, a stained-glass window and a monument to honour of 11th Armored and 17th Airborne Divisions that liberated the village of Houmont in January 1945.

Beyond the battle Port de Trèves, a square stone tower, is the last remaining piece of medieval fortifications that once surrounded the city. It was originally built as a gateway in 1332 but converted into a prison and temporary refuge in the late 1600s until World War I. It was almost destroyed during World War II but restored to its former glory afterwards in a symbolic victory.

The Piconrue Musée de la Grande Ardenne and House of Legends showcases religious heritage and folklore of the Ardennes from Catholicism to fairies, gnomes, were-

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wolves and other creatures of the nocturnal forest. Outside is a large monument dedicated to Bastognians who resisted and died in the war. Near Place Piconrue is a stained glass window illustrating a herdsman taking pigs to an acorn field in honour of local farmers.

L’Orangerie houses a contemporary art space and Centre Culturel Bastogne. On the main shopping street, Rue du Sablon, two fountains with small children crawling up represent rivalries between people from the upper and lower parts of Bastogne. Église Saint-Pierre, dating to the 12th century, is known for an ornate ceiling, 18th century pulpit and moving sculpture of four soldiers outside of it (this area is also where the annual Christmas is held). Église Saint-Lambert in Rachamps is listed as heritage, largely because of its Romanesque tower and 18th century furniture.

Surrounding nature For visitors seeking a break from the wartime reminders, there is stunning nature in and around Bastogne. For example, Parc Elisabeth has a rose garden, labyrinth, perimeter walk, water jets and fruit bushes. Bastogne-Tourisme.be offers 12 walking routes from 4.6 to 11.7km and five cycling routes from 20 to 38km.

Belgian blue cows and deer are common sightings and one pedestrian trail even features a bison farm. The tourism office also has information about hiring electric, mountain bikes and riding behind a team of horses.

The Haute-Sure Foret d’Anlier Nature Reserve covers seven communes, including Bastogne, over 80,000 hectares. It contains Belgium's largest beech forest and six signposted walking routes, including the Legends Route with folklore from villages in the reserve. It also has four biking routes called Cyclolégendes between 35 and 65km.

Orti Nature Reserve in nearby Sainte-Ode is known for marshland, spruce trees, black storks and beavers. It features Le sentier (trail) de la Girolle, nearly 18km, which cuts through an orchard of apples and pears as well as an apiary supplying Orti Honey.

Liège-Bastogne-Liège is a 254.5km route in late April for avid cyclists with challenging hills and steep slopes. It was set up in 1892 by two Liège cycling groups, becoming an annual race with world champions like five-time winner Eddy Merckx (1969-1975) and Tadej Pogačar (2024). Today, it is known as La Doyenne (the oldest) cycling race of the classics. Sculptures in a roundabout near the Bastogne Nord bus station pay tribute to this famous cycling race.

Tastes of the Ardennes Jambon d'Ardenne, or Ardennes ham, has a protected geographical indication (PGI) from the EU, and there is even a Confrérie des Her-

diers d'Ardenne (Royal Brotherhood of Ardenne Herders) to uphold the appellation. Le Musée du Cochon by Ets Hartman et Fils and Boucherie Grégoire on Rue du Sablon offers a range of cured and smoked meats. Murielle Courtois and Claude Ligot Butcher-Caterer in the nearby villages of Marvie and Lavacherie, respectively, offer artisanal meats cured by traditional methods.

Bastogne also boasts several craft brews.

Memory was created this year from American hops in commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. Other local beers include Airborne, Patton, Piche Cacaye de Bastogne (named after a folkloric character), La Vatch’ Hot, Kodacieuse, BR, La Cuvee de la Jonquille, La Troufette, La Corne (du Bois des Pendus) and Vapeur Cochonne. Some are sold at the Bastogne Tourism office and Bastogne War Museum.

Other regional drinks include Nuts hazelnut liqueur, Le Petillant Ardennais sparkling apertif from Sainte-Ode and wines from La Cave du Roy in Neffe.

Lait P’Tits Plaisirs and Le Ferme d’Antan offer tastes of the Ardennes with homemade dairy products. The former sells yoghurts and cheese and Antan goat cheese by appointment. Le Rucher (Apiary) de Lutremange sells its own honey on site.

Local produce, snacks, flowers, textiles and more are sold every 15 days by about 100 merchants at the Foire aux Camelots (street fair) near Récollets football pitch. The next one is December 21.

Bastogne also boasts many shops, including unique boutiques, which are open on Sunday afternoons (14-18:30h), unlike most other Belgian towns.

SAVOUR Le Clos Marine: An upscale restaurant with European cuisine incorporating Belgian ingredients, plus a large, inviting terrace filled with greenery L’Etable d’Evelyne: A hidden gem, this modern, stylish farmhouse serves upscale Belgian cuisine with local ingredients in the village of Marvie Le Fin Fumet: A mash-up of French, Italian and Belgian cuisine beautifully presented in a homey atmosphere Le Saint-Germain: Offers contemporary French cuisine inspired by the seasons and local produce via “gourmet escapades” (menus) and à la carte. A terrace and floorto-ceiling windows integrate nature.

Wagon Léo: The oldest restaurant in the city (it started as a frite stand in an Army tram wagon in 1946), this large “institution” offers excellent French-Belgian cuisine, in-

EXPERIENCE Nuts Weekend: This December 13-15 will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge with a night walk in the footsteps of American liberators, Defensive Perimeter Walk (7, 14 and 21 km), throwing of nuts from the balcony of city hall, a parade, display of military vehicles, concerts, light show at Mardasson Memorial and guided tours at all war museums. Bastogne80.be has a complete schedule.

Pat’Carnaval: A three-day folkloric celebration marking the end of winter in February, including a parade of floats, shows for children and the election of the carnival prince, Gédiwi Legend Boucles de Bastogne: An old-timer car rally with a series of races, February 1-2, 2025 Liège-Bastogne-Liège: A legendary cycling race in mid-April that passes through the hilliest part of Belgium La Fête de la Musique: A free music festival every June in Parc Elisabeth

Haute-Sure Foret d’Anlier Nature Reserve covers seven communes, including Bastogne, over 80,000 hectares.

It contains Belgium's largest beech forest and six signposted walking routes, including the Legends Route with folklore from villages in the reserve.

Top: Porte de Trèves. Above: Le Bois Jacques

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Left: The annual Liège-Bastogne-Liège bicycle race passes through the town. Right: Belgian blue cows

Jambon d'Ardenne, or Ardennes ham, has a protected geographical indication (PGI) from the EU, and there is even a Confrérie des Herdiers d'Ardenne (Royal Brotherhood of Ardenne Herders) to uphold the appellation.

cluding escargots, bouillabaisse, cassoulet and “royal” vol-au-vent with foie gras and shaved truffles

Le 222 Bar à Vin: A wine bar and French restaurant in a multi-level stone building with a cosy, low-lit atmosphere

SIP & SNACK

STAY

Bistro Léo: Next door to and affiliated with Wagon Léo, this casual counterpart offers world cuisine from spaghetti to couscous in a warm atmosphere distinguished by a stained-glass canopy Brasserie Lamborelle: Known for serving beer out of ceramic army “helmets” (an homage to a wounded soldier who drank beer out of his real helmet), this cosy bar and casual restaurant is complete with a fireplace. It sells bottles of Airborne beer with helmet mugs in an ammunition box.

Le Nut’s: Aptly located on Place McAuliffe, this brasserie (with an oddly placed apostrophe in its name), serves classic American and Belgian dishes amidst wartime photos and memorabilia Mes Petites Gourmands: A small, Italian wine bar and eatery on Place McAuliffe offering tapas, salads and pasta

Hôtel Léo: Located on Place McAuliffe, this recently refurbished, modern hotel offers 34 rooms that “reflect the world of travel and trains,” two restaurants and free parking Hôtel Melba: Offers 50 modern rooms, including a free buffet breakfast, plus private parking, a bar and Belgian-Mexican restaurant Mel'ting Pot La Ferme Villa: Connected to L’Etable d’Evelyne in Marvie, this property offers several modern, stylish “gîtes” (cottages/ apartments) and an outdoor terrace and swimming pool La Clochette: A restored, 20th century family house turned into a rural gîte in Foy for 9-11 people with four large bedrooms, three bathrooms, an equipped kitchen, parking, laundry machines and a terrace with a gas barbecue Merceny Motel: Offering eight stylish, modern rooms and a breakfast buffet for good value

SHOP Bastogne Tourism: Located in Place McAuliffe, it sells a range of military-related items, some of which are produced locally Battle Shop: Sells all things military-related from souvenirs to caps, clothing, beer and Nuts brand liquors Louise au Sablon: A gift shop focused on home decoration and tea with a local flair Pierre Plas: Named after a young pastry chef, this shop offers hand-crafted chocolate bars and pralines made by a chocolatier couple PURE: A large grocery store featuring local artisan, bio and seasonal products Left: Airborne beer. Right: Wagon Léo

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WEEKEND ★ 14-15/12/2024 ★

★ ANNIVERSARY BASTOGNE 1944-2024 www.bastognebarracks.be Bastogne Barracks Rue de la Roche 40, 6600 Bastogne www.warheritage.be THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 129

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Méribel’s range of familyfriendly activities, combined with tailored accommodations and dining options, creates a welcoming environment for all ages to enjoy winter in the Alps.

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE | 131

Dark horse As a child, Claire Dilewyns was excluded from a major honour in her city. But the brewery and beer she created with her father and sisters would become the pride of Dendermonde. Breandán Kearney uncovers the story of one of Belgium’s hidden winter beers

Claire Dilewyns under Dendermonde’s Ros Beiaard sculpture

It was the start of something new and big for us as a family.

O

n May 27, 1990, four boys – decked out in full armour and carrying swords and shields – were paraded around their hometown astride a giant model horse six metres high, two metres wide, and five metres long. The horse’s head was a wooden sculpture dating back to the 1600s, decorated with ostrich feathers and festooned in the red and white colours of the city. Its black tail was fashioned from the hair of 30 living horses.

It was the centrepiece of the Dendermonde Ommegang, a procession that takes place once every 10 years. The spectacle celebrates the legend of the Ros Beiaard: a magical horse, known for its strength and intelligence, and said to have carried the Four Sons of Aymon as they fled from emperor Charlemagne.

The four boys atop the horse were the Veldeman brothers: Gert, Stijn, Stefaan and Toon.

They were selected against strict criteria: They had to be four consecutive brothers, without a girl

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in between; all born and living in Dendermonde; whose parents and grandparents were born in Dendermonde; and aged between seven and 21 years old on the day of the procession. The Veldemans were treated like heroes by the spectators, who cheered and celebrated with beers in hand.

Claire Dilewyns was born in Dendermonde three days later. She, too, has three siblings: Anne-Cathérine, Julie and Hélène. But together, they are four sisters – and the rules dictate that only brothers can ride the horse. Claire Dilewyns would never be allowed to serve Dendermonde at the Ommegang.

2000 Two days short of her 10th birthday, Claire watched her very first Ommegang. Roy, Nick, Ken, and Dean Coppieters were the brothers selected to ride the Ros Beiaard in 2000. Claire watched them soak in the adulation.

At the time, she was helping her dental technician father with his newfound hobby of homebrewing. Vincent Dilewyns had brewed his first beer in December 1999 in his garage.

Together with her sisters, Claire assisted in bottling beers and cleaning equipment. Bit by bit, she learned about the technical processes of mashing, fermentation, and packaging.

Vincent Dilewyns’ first beer was named Vicaris Tripel, a reference to his name (“Vi” for Vincent) and to his profession (cariës refers to tooth decay). The name also hints at the inspiration Vincent took from the Trappists (vicaris means “vicar” in Flemish).

The first batch was a small one for AnneCathérine’s communion party. Then another for a local historical society exhibition. Vincent arranged for a larger batch to be brewed under licence at contract facility De Proefbrouwerij, 25 km away in Lochristi. Then in 2006, the Dilewyns were invited to the Zythos Bierfestival in Sint Niklaas, where Vicaris Tripel won the Zythos Consumer Trophy for the beer most appreciated by festival attendees.

Before long, the Dilewyns had beer distributors, retailers, and enthusiasts showing up at their front door, all seeking out Vicaris Tripel.

“We received thousands of people in buses from all over the country,” says Claire. “It was the start of something new and big for us as a family.”

After the Vicaris Tripel came Vicaris Generaal, a Belgian dark strong ale of 8.5% ABV named for Dilewyns’s wife, Genevieve Leysen – the ‘general’ of the family. The third beer was Vicaris Tripel/Gueuze, an innovative blend of the Tripel with Lambic from a Pajottenland producer.

Like the Ros Beiaard Ommegang, their fourth beer was seasonal. Vicaris Winter is a spiced winter ale brewed once every year, in July, so it has time to ferment and condition appropriately for release in October. It’s a boozy beer of 10% ABV with a roasted, caramel-like malt character, red-fruit esters, and hints of liquorice and star anise. By the time the Dilewyns released Vicaris Winter, their side project had exploded.

2010 As the next group of Dendermonde brothers – Maarten, Niels, Dieter, and Michiel Van Damme – prepared to mount the Ros Beiaard horse in 2010, the Dilewyns were mounting up for an adventure of their own.

Two of Vincent Dilewyns’s daughters decided to start a commercial brewery with their father: Anne-Cathérine would work in production; Claire in marketing, accounting, and sales. The youngest sister, Hélène, studied biochemistry, and would potentially join the brewery in the future. Julie would go on to work in customer care engineering, but as a trained chef she would also help with catering at brewery events.

In March 2010, the Dilewyns installed their new brewing system in the Hoogveld industrial estate in Dendermonde, where flax was historically processed.

At one of the first hospitality trade expositions that the family attended, they arrived late to the event and struggled to erect their stand. A young man named Kristof Bastiaens offered to help. He worked for the Barry Callebaut Group of chocolate producers that were also exhibiting at the exposition. Vincent invited Bastiaens to the Dilewyns’ stall for a beer, where he met Claire. Today, the couple are married with two children.

In 2017, Anne-Cathérine Dilewyns decided she wanted to pursue other projects and left the brewery. Vincent Dilewyns planned to retire. And so, Claire Dilewyns became the head of Dendermonde’s only brewery.

2020 The Dendermonde Ros Beiaard Ommegang of 2020 could not take place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so the four selected brothers – Marteen, Wout, Stan, and Lander Cassiman – did not get to ride the horse until May 2022. For this edition, Brouwerij Dilewyns brewed the official beer of the Ommegang, named simply Ros Beiaard. Attendees cheered while holding Vicaris beers in their hands.

In 2022, Kristof Bastiaens quit his job as sales director at the Barry Callebaut Group to work full-time alongside his wife as co-owner of Brouwerij Dilewyns.

Just as Vincent strove to innovate, so too do Claire Dilewyns and Kristof Bastiaens. Vicaris Lino is a blonde ale of 6.5% ABV infused with flax fibres, which the brewery describes as “the first beer in the world brewed with flax.” Vicaris Nano° is an alcohol-free lager. All Brouwerij Dilewyns’ beers are produced today in Vincent’s preferred – without filtration, centrifugation, or pasteurisation.

The next Ros Beiaard Ommegang in Dendermonde is scheduled for 2030, but if the rules remain unchanged, the couple’s children, Juliette and Leonie, will never be selected to ride the horse, just as Claire Dilewyns never made it. Nonetheless, she’s left her mark on the town.

The brewery she owns and runs produces beers which have become an integral part not only of the decennial Ommegang celebrations, but of the life of the city in the years in between.

Since Brouwerij Dilewyns began, the symbol on the brewery logo – which still appears on every bottle and glass – depicts a horse, carrying four people on its back. The outline of their clothes and the way their hair flows wildly in the wind suggest that the four sisters did get to ride the horse after all.

This is an edited excerpt from Breandán Kearney’s book Hidden Beers of Belgium, now available from all good bookshops and online retailers

The brewery she owns and runs produces beers which have become an integral part not only of the decennial Ommegang celebrations, but of the life of the city in the years in between.

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Food & Drink

What are the most delicious foods, refreshing drinks, coolest cafés and intriguing restaurants in Brussels now? Here are some that recently caught the eye of our food and drink expert Hughes Belin

Restaurant

Entropy

My stock of superlative words is quickly exhausted by Entropy’s cuisine végétale. The sophistication of the dishes, the variety and freshness of the ingredients, the beverage pairings, the atmosphere and perfect service…I cannot understand why it has not yet earned a Michelin star.

Let’s be clear about the sophistication. It means that each part of a dish is independently prepared and then assembled in a gastronomic combination that enhances each component’s taste, using aromas, scents, temperature, texture and visual presentation.

The restaurant has an astonishingly creative menu of four to seven vegetarian dishes, and each dish is named after a theme, such as naturality, resilience, passion, development and souvenir. The starters are similarly designed around the four elements of water, air, fire and earth. While one might expect the fire starter to be spicy, co-founder and chef Elliott Van de Velde instead plays with charred and charcoal aromas.

The chef’s creative and intuitive work

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is further enhanced by its presentation on beautiful ceramics by Studio-Mattes (Ghent).

“You buy art,” Van de Velde says. It also summarises his cuisine style.

Entropy’s cuisine is advertised to be 90% local and 95% vegetable-based, with some dishes containing very little gluten or dairy.

The restaurant works closely with three local farms to source their vegetables and a constellation of small and local producers no more than 80 kilometres away (except the wine).

For a gastronomic restaurant, Entropy’s price is fair. I suggest their spécialité fromagère – you won’t regret it. Like all dishes, you can accompany it with carefully chosen natural wines, Brussels Craft Sake (see below) or a home-made non-alcoholic drink as sophisticated as the food menu and made with, among other things, plants and flowers from the restaurant’s urban garden.

The restaurant was a byproduct of a social project to fight food waste, and the team still provides 120-150 meals cooked with unsold produce to social associations. What’s even more incredible is its location: right in the centre of town on Place Saint-Géry.

Entropy Place Saint-Géry 22, 1000 Brussels

Café

Goods Goods is hipster-foodie playground that started during the COVID pandemic when Louis Leysen turned his rotisserie KipKot at the corner of Place Saint-Boniface and Rue de la Paix in Ixelles into a mostly vegetarian culinary destination called Savage, and put ex-San Ghent chef Joel Rammelsberg in the kitchen.

Savage, launched in 2022, quickly earned a Gault & Millau award and proved so successful it expanded across the street. Last year, it partnered with pastry chef Alice Jaroszuk to create a bakery-grocery fusion called Goods.

In a gentrified area that already hosts cafes and excellent bakeries, Goods offers much, much more than a perfect cappuccino or croissant. The show-stoppers are the dozens of exceptional pastries, including brioche crème brûlée (a must!), cacio e pepe or kimchi stuffed croissants and pain au chocolat with Jerusalem artichoke cream. The sandwiches, which change all the time, are also a blast.

You can eat and drink upstairs at a family-style table or go outside on the terrace – on Sundays, the big terrace of Savage is available to Goods customers too.

Goods is part of the Savage ecosystem, so the bakery is also part grocery shop where you can buy homemade jars of pickles, spicy peanut butter, lacto-fermented veggies, chilli, kimchi

Drink

Brussels Craft Sake Ex-IT consultant Laurent Dejaer became enamoured with sake after visiting Japan in 2018, and after attending a sake fair, decided to make a Belgian version of the Japanese rice wine. This summer he began selling to premium restaurants including Entropy (see separate article), Savage/Goods (see separate article), Kamo, Old Boy, Le Tournant and Bouchéry.

Premium sake is made from four basic ingredients: water, rice, yeast and koji-kin. The latter is a mould – aspergillus oryzae – which produces koji (ferments) when cultivated with rice and breaks down the rice’s starch into fermentable sugars. Steamed rice, hoki, water and yeast are then fermented through several stages that can last up to a month, after which the mix is pressed, filtered and blended. Dejaer uses traditional recipes to produce his sake with two different yeasts and organic round rice from Italy, the same used to cook risotto.

and even homemade broths. The most amazing product might be garum: an ancient fermented fish juice.

Drinks include softs like Rish kombucha, Chouette Canette, zero-alcohol botanical drinks from Sobr, a great selection of Brussels craft beers, Brussels craft saké (see separate article) and a small selection of natural wines. The latter include Flat Tire, a blouge (i.e. made from white and red grapes) from Sancerre made by Savage’s talented sommeliers.

Goods 25, Rue de la Paix 1050 Ixelles

A key influence on sake quality is the level the rice grain polishing. Brussels Craft Sake’s basic rice is polished at 90%, which creates a very fine sake with fruity and floral aromas and 1414.5% alcohol content. It has low residual sugar – as much as a dry white wine – but is less acidic.

Sake pairs better with food than wine because it develops umami flavours.

Brussels Craft Sake offers four different sakes, with labels that draw inspiration from Katsushika Hokusai’s sketchbooks. Two are classics: the ‘dragonfly’ Junmai Nama is unpasteurised and dry; the ‘yellow frog’ Junmai Nama Chozo is medium dry and pasteurised in the bottle.

His third, the ‘green frog’ Junami Nama is macerated with Belgium’s thee gallium odoratum plant, or sweet woodruff (used in the traditional cocktail maitrank), creating a perfumed, soft sake, with an aroma of tonka bean.

His fourth, the ‘pink frog’ Junami Nama, is also a fusion drink: macerated with raspberry, giving it a distinctive dark pink colour and a powerful scent.

“I sell to innovative restaurants,” Dejaer explains. He is already working on more sake fusion flavours, using ingredients such as fig leaf and elderflower.

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Food

Chilli Traditional Belgian cuisine is anything but spicy. Thanks to globalisation and evolving food habits, however, it’s now possible to buy chilli made in Belgium - and Brussels hosts four chilli sauce manufacturers.

The hottest manufacturer is SWET, which sources most of its chilli peppers from BIGH, an aquaponic farm on the rooftop of Anderlecht’s slaughterhouse. SWET chilli comes in 100ml bottles, and there are 20 or so varieties permanently in their catalogue, including very hot ones for people who eat aji by the spoon. They are incredibly fruity, colourful and as crazy as their creator, Thibault Fournal.

Les piments de Fati offers a delicious series of chilli sauces created by power couple Maxime Poncelet and his Nigerian wife Fati with chillies sourced from a social economy farm in La Louvière. Their offerings include the sauce Belbisco, the spicy olive oil Pica-Oli and three chilli pastes in pots: a raw and lemony green, a cooked mango and ginger yellow, and cooked tomato red.

The most recent Brussels manufacturer is Ryan Abdesselem, a Franco-Tunisian from Brussels, who shares his passion for harissa under the Felfel brand. Felfel is supported by Food’Up, a regional programme that boosts sustainable local food, and Abdesselem also offers Tunisian cooking workshops to learn how to use harissa in the kitchen. All his chillies are locally produced.

Flanders also has chilli sauce manufacturers, such as Jeremy Bosman, the founder of an Antwerp restaurant Jerry’s Fine Foods. His Dr Octopussy peanut sauce is a must-try with chicken, fish, veggies, rice, salads or as a marinade. The Kinshasa Heat Bourbon is a Congolese-style hot sauce based on an ancient family recipe from Central Kongo, perfect in sandwiches or on grilled food. The Xi’an smoke is a unique dark red flavour bomb that’s not too spicy and adds a smoky touch to your palette. The Granada sun is refreshing and combines sunny flavours like orange and red pepper with more earthy ones like cumin and fennel.

Finally, Max De Cock in Koekelberg sells spicy oils uniquely packaged in beer bottles under the brand Madmax. The oils come in three strengths: original pique oil, mild Max and Madmax extreme (in a droplet bottle). Max also sells pickled jalapeños.

Now you can finally stop relying solely on Tabasco or sriracha. Burn Belgium, burn!

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Art and events

Isabella Vivian selects the best current and upcoming events and exhibitions

ART & DESIGN

HOSTING La Centrale, Place SaintCatherine 45, 1000 Brussels Until February 9, 2025

BALLOON WORLD ADVENTURE Place Charles Rogier, 1000 Brussels Until January 31, 2025 Designed by Dutch artist Guido Verhoef, this immersive experience features striking replicas of iconic monuments from around the world, including the Eiffel Tower, the Sphinx of Giza, the Statue of Liberty and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, all made from more than 500,000 balloons.

Hosting celebrates the diverse artistic scene in Brussels for which the curators called for submissions of all generations and disciplines in the visual arts. All proceeds of the works presented go to the artists.

CHRISTOPHER KULENDRAN THOMAS - SAFE ZONE Wiels, Avenue Van Volxem 354, 1190 Forest Until January 5, 2025 Safe Zone presents a series of paintings and a 24-screen video installation, created using AI technologies. The Tamil artist’s paintings depict the colonial art history brought to Sri Lanka by European settlers.

HERE WE ARE! WOMEN IN DESIGN 1900 – TODAY Design Museum, Place de Belgique 1, 1020 Laeken Until March 9, 2025

ART3F Brussels Expo, Place de Belgique 1, 1020 Laeken November 22-24, 2024

EMOTION AIR EXHIBITION Balloon Museum, Avenue Impératrice Charlotte 6, 1020 Laeken Until January 26, 2025 This exhibition focuses on inflatable art and invites visitors to reconsider the traditional concept of artistic form. From monumental installations that rise majestically in the exhibition space to more intimate pieces, some 20 artists explore the extraordinary medium with works related to specific emotions, from fear and frustration to joy and ecstasy.

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This contemporary art fair exhibits all over Europe – and this November it’s Brussels’ time to shine. Art enthusiasts and collectors can meet with painters, sculptors and photographers directly and find out more about how they work.

Despite making crucial contributions to the development of modern design, women in the industry have often been overlooked. This exhibition seeks to change this, however, by putting 80 women designers in the spotlight and telling their story and their struggle for equal rights and appreciation through 120 years of design history.

ETERNAL SPRING. GARDENS AND TAPESTRIES IN THE RENAISSANCE ART ANTWERP

ECHOES OF ART DECO: A JOURNEY THROUGH LIGHT AND SOUND IN THE 1920-30S Boghossian Foundation, Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 67, 1050 Ixelles Until May 25, 2025 The Boghossian Foundation is presenting a thematic exhibition celebrating 100 years of the Art Deco movement in Brussels. The immersive exhibition invites visitors to explore the iconic architecture of the Villa Empain, as well as drawings, ceramics, woodwork, ironwork and stylistic stained-glass art, with an exceptional collection of 25 original pieces.

Antwerp Expo, Jan van Rijswijcklaan 191, 2020 Antwerp December 12-15, 2024 Organised by Art Brussels, the Flemish version of this contemporary art fair is returning for its fourth edition. More than 65 participating galleries from 11 countries will be present, showcasing established artists, fostering emerging talents, and facilitating dynamic exchanges between artists, collectors, gallerists, and art enthusiasts.

BRUSSELS AFFORDABLE ART FAIR

Museum Hof van Busleyden, Frederik de Merodestraat 65, 2800 Mechelen December 14, 2024 March 16, 2025 Museum Hof van Busleyden in Mechelen is showcasing an array of majestic 16th century Flemish tapestries which form an allegorical luscious Renaissance garden. By using precious materials such as gold and silk and unparalleled knowledge and skill, the artists capture nature in their woven works to create an eternal spring. The exhibition also features paintings, sculptures and books from art collector Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle.

Tour & Taxis, Avenue du Port 86C, 1000 Brussels February 5-9, 2025 The Affordable Art Fair will be back in Brussels for its 16th edition next February, with a wide range of contemporary artworks from an array of Belgian and international galleries. The week will be filled with thousands of affordable contemporary artworks, installations and interactive workshops – with something for every taste and budget!

BRAFA ART FAIR Brussels Expo, Place de Belgique 1, 1020 Laeken January 26 - February 2, 2025 Recognised as one of Europe's most prestigious art fairs, BRAFA puts Belgium at the centre of the fine art map. The fair welcomes art collectors, gallery owners and art enthusiasts, with thousands of works spanning all different styles and periods presented by a host of internationally renowned galleries.

BRIGHT FESTIVAL Various locations in Brussels February 13-16, 2025 One of the unmissable tourist events in the region, Bright Festival will be back in 2025, lighting up some of the capital's most iconic spots and bringing some joy to the post-Christmas lull of February. Residents and visitors alike can stroll through the city and marvel at the original artistic light installations.

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MUSIC

BRUSSELS INTERNATIONAL GUITAR FESTIVAL & COMPETITIONS

ARS MUSICA Maison du Peuple, Parvis de Saint-Gilles 37, 1060 Saint-Gilles Until December 3, 2024 Founded in Brussels in 1989, Ars Musica is an international biennial festival which explores the world of contemporary music. ‘Urban Nature’ is this edition’s central theme, focusing on nature, landscapes and plants as an inspiration for today's musical creation. Composer and guitarist Bryce Dessner of the group The National is the guest of honour.

Théâtre du Vaudeville, Galerie de la Reine 11, 1000 Brussels November 22-26, 2024 Now in its 13th year, this music festival has established itself as one of the major events of its kind in Europe, with numerous concerts, masterclasses, exhibitions and competitions, and a wide range of genres on show, from classical and Latino to Baroque, Brazilian jazz and flamenco.

MUSIC CHAPEL FESTIVAL

BRUSSELS JAZZ FESTIVAL FLAGEY

Flagey cultural centre, Place Sainte-Croix, 1050 Ixelles December 4-7, 2024

Flagey cultural centre, Place Sainte-Croix, 1050 Ixelles January 9-18, 2025

The 15th edition of the Music Chapel Festival will take spectators on a journey to Italy, with opera arias, chamber music, symphonic compositions and more. Highlights include an evening of Vivaldi, a rendition of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of The Animals, and the closing concert featuring Respighi’s Pini di Roma and Berlioz’s Harold in Italy.

A highlight of the Brussels jazz calendar, Flagey’s beloved festival will return for its tenth edition in January. With a packed programme of innovative jazz, young European and international talent, a collaboration with the London-based Jazz re:freshed, and three projects from artist-in-residence Bram De Looze, this edition is not one to miss.

GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG – RICHARD WAGNER La Monnaie/De Munt, Place de la Monnaie, 1000 Brussels, February 4 - March 2, 2025

Eager opera fans can rejoice as Richard Wagner’s epic Götterdämmerung will be staged at La Monnaie/De Munt in the spring. Conducted by Alain Altinoglud and directed by Pierre Audi, the opera intriguingly has more than one ending – which Wagner spent 26 years tinkering with.

FILM & THEATRE

COUDENBERG SOUND BOX FEST Coudenberg Palace, Place des Palais 7, 1000 Brussels November 24-December 15, 2024 Much more than a classical music festival, Coudenberg Sound Box Fest offers audiences double concerts across four Sunday evenings, in the archaeological site of the Coudenberg Palace.

The aim is to reconnect audiences to Belgium's archaeological, historical and artistic heritage while introducing them to French Baroque jewels on early instruments and timeless classics such as Bach's Goldberg Variations and Satie's Gymnopédies.

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BRUXELLES SUR SCÈNES

CINEMAMED FILM FESTIVAL

Various locations in Brussels Until November 30, 2024

Various locations in Brussels November 28 - December 6, 2024

Explore 13 of the capital's most unusual venues, cafésthéâtres, during the eighth edition of this eclectic festival.

Bruxelles sur Scènes invites lovers of the arts and people less familiar with theatre to explore a rich mix of music, comedy and conviviality, with over 100 performances by established artists and emerging talents throughout November.

CinemaMed will celebrate its 24th edition at the end of this year, once again putting Mediterranean stories and issues in the spotlight. Each year, the festival screens around 60 new dramas and documentaries from countries around the Mediterranean Sea. Insightful meetings and debates are also organised after each screening.

SCIENCE

CURIEUCITY

WILD?

Marolles November 29 - December 1, 2024

Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Rue Vautier 29, 1000 Brussels Until August 31, 2025

For its third and final edition of the year, CurieuCity is returning to Brussels’ Marolles neighbourhood. This free festival, which combines science with art, brings the whole family together with exhibitions, workshops and discussions on space, mathematics, mechanics, chemistry, physics and more.

DAY OF SCIENCE Meise Botanic Garden, Nieuwelaan 38, 1860 Meise November 24, 2024 Flora and fauna fans are in luck: Meise Botanic Garden is laying on a packed programme for this year’s Day of Science. Curious scientists of all ages can come and taste different types of coffee and bananas, tap into a tree and discover all sorts of unusual plant species and animals, from flatworms to clawed frogs.

Combining the natural sciences with philosophy, anthropology and poetry, this insightful exhibition explores the concept of ‘wild’ and will awaken your curiosity and critical thinking. Visitors can learn more about Belgian wildlife, the history of the domestication of wolves and various other animals and enjoy films, scientific collections and more.

HISTORY & CULTURE

TERRACOTTA ARMY AND THE FIRST EMPEROR OF CHINA IN BRUSSELS Tour & Taxis, Avenue du Port 86C, 1000 Brussels Until February 2, 2025

THE LEGEND OF NAPOLEON IN LEGO BRICKS Domain of the Battle of Waterloo 1815 Battlefield, Route du Lion 1815, 1420 Braine l’Alleud Until January 5, 2025 The Waterloo Domaine is collaborating with Lego to showcase some 40 displays that explain the battle – and offering a unique retrospective of Napoleon’s life, from his birthplace in Ajaccio to the vast plains of Austerlitz, passing through Egyptian deserts to his final defeat in the fields south of Brussels.

Travel back in time to ancient China with this immersive exhibition on one of the world’s greatest archaeological treasures: the Terracotta Army. A reconstruction of over 300 detailed replicas of statues, chariots, weapons and objects from the First Emperor's necropolis, offering a glimpse into daily, military and imperial life over 2,200 years ago.

PRISON. CHAMP I HORS-CHAMP - EXPOSITION COLLECTIVE Centre culturel Jacques Franck, Chaussée de Waterloo 94, 1060 SaintGilles Until December 8, 2024 An exhibition bringing together artists and inmates who provide intimate and critical views of the realities of life in and around Haren and Forest prisons.

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PLAISIRS D’HIVER Various locations in Brussels November 29, 2024 - January 5, 2025

UNDER-GROUND: THE REVEALED PALACE Coudenberg Palace, Place des Palais 7, 1000 Brussels Until March 2, 2025 An exhibition recounting the story of the now-subterranean Coudenberg Palace, which was engulfed in flames overnight in Brussels on February 3, 1731.

For 40 years it remained in ruins and was later hidden under Place Royale. Visitors can rediscover the palace’s extensive remains, uncovered by urban archaeology.

THE SMURF EXPERIENCE

Winter Wonders (Plaisirs d’Hiver/Winterpret) will once again adorn the city centre of Brussels this festive season, with the traditional Ferris wheel, merry-go-rounds, ice-skating and over 200 chalet stalls of handmade crafts, piping hot dishes and mulled wine. The festivities will kick off in mid-November with the arrival of the iconic Christmas tree on Grand Place.

Brussels Expo, Place de Belgique 1, 1020 Laeken Until January 5, 2025 Spend a day living like one of the beloved blue creatures at Brussels Expo! With cutting-edge technology and impressive visual effects, visitors of all ages can enter the magical world of the Smurfs, concoct magic potions with Papa Smurf, take part in fun, interactive challenges and defeat the evil wizard Gargamel.

BRUSSELS CHRISTMAS CIRCUS Place Flagey, 1050 Ixelles December 19, 2024 - January 5, 2025 Alexandre Bouglione’s large, colourful circus tent is returning to Ixelles’ Place Flagey this Christmas with a new show featuring international illusionists, acrobats, trapeze artists and clowns.

GRRRABUGE FUTURE WINE FESTIVAL LaVallée, Rue Adolphe Lavallée 39, 1080 Molenbeek-Saint-Jean November 23-24, 2024 A newcomer on the Brussels events scene, Grrrabuge aims to introduce visitors to the increasingly popular world of natural wine, reflecting on the product’s future while respecting local producers and the planet. The two-day event will feature conferences and tastings by some 50 winemakers, with a concert by Borokov Borokov on Saturday night.

PRÓXIMAMENTE FESTIVAL KVS, Rue de Laeken 146, 1000 Brussels November 18-23, 2024 The third edition of this vibrant artistic gathering will offer six days of lectures, showcases, round tables, talks, Latin karaoke and more. Artists from Latin America and its diasporas will spark conversations with Brussels artists, sharing their creative processes and visions for the future.

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MASERATI 110 YEARS Autoworld, Parc du Cinquantenaire 11, 1000 Brussels December 19, 2024 - February 23, 2025 The Italian luxury vehicle manufacturer Maserati is marking its 110th birthday, and Autoworld in Brussels is celebrating in style. Over a century of the brand’s fascinating history will be exhibited at the museum and it promises a perfect day out for car lovers.

WILD? EXHIBITION

18.10.24 → 31.08.25

Vautierstraat 29 1000 Brussel

Naar de tentoonstelling ontworpen door

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Breaking pavement news For aeons, in Belgium, the car was king and road rage was the rage. Today, however, manners are what matter on the street. Yet as Geoff Meade writes, this pedestrian politeness can go too far

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W

hy did the columnist cross the road?

Not to get to the other side, because I didn’t want to get to the other side, but because a motorist gallantly stopped to let me cross.

When I first came here decades ago, legend had it that if a Belgian-registered car stops at a pedestrian crossing it’s either broken down or run out of petrol.

Coming from Britain, where motorists have always been genetically modified to slam on their brakes when approaching any zebra crossing that has anyone standing within a mile of it, this was an important cautionary tale.

In the UK – I’m generalising and exaggerating here – you still only have to think about crossing a road and, like magic, entire streets of traffic screech to a halt in readiness. It remains a matter of national pride that car and pedestrian never occupy any part of a pedestrian crossing at the same time.

Here, the poor walker has always faced a very one-sided gladiatorial contest when stepping onto the broad white road stripes which, in principle, denote a brief moment of superiority in the right-of-way battle against relentless traffic.

Politesse oblige Things have certainly changed a lot in Belgium, but I still wouldn’t assume, as many of my expat acquaintances do, that he or she who strides without hesitation onto the crossing while glaring at the oncoming cars will emerge alive and well on the other side.

So, these days, when a Belgian driver actually volunteers to stop, even misguidedly, it would be churlish to respond by refusing to cross the road just because I had no intention of going in that direction.

Where I was going was along the pavement towards a road junction with the intention of following the pavement round a corner and into the next street. Only if I had walked straight on would I confront the pedestrian crossing straddling the main road, but I wasn’t doing that.

In fact, I hadn’t even reached the turning point in the pavement when I noticed the car approaching along the main road and beginning to slow down. That, in itself, was enough to draw my attention, and then I saw that the driver was looking across at me and gesturing in a manner that can only be described as breaking new ground for the pedestrian/motorist interface in this country: he was inviting him to cross the road.

My instinct was to acknowledge this politesse by smiling while shaking my head and making a slightly premature shift of direction to demonstrate to the driver that I was staying on this side of the road.

But then I thought of all the times, as a driver, that I’ve been annoyed when people mill-

ing about near pedestrian crossings don’t cross when you’ve stopped especially for them.

I realised that if I ignored this motorist’s kind offer, he would never slow down for a pedestrian again.

And on behalf of Belgium’s pedestrians, of whom I am increasingly frequently one, I couldn’t let that happen.

I crossed the road, smiling and nodding thanks in the direction of my Good Samaritan motorist, who smiled back at me.

My problem was what to do when I reached the other side of the road. Turning round to retrace my steps wasn’t immediately an option, because the Samaritan had only progressed a short distance beyond the crossing and it would hurt his feelings if he looked in his rear-view mirror and saw me scurrying back to where I came from.

So I continued walking in the wrong direction waiting for the Samaritan to disappear from view. And then the main road traffic ground to a halt: my Samaritan could, if he wanted to, follow my progress.

Not knowing how soon the traffic would start moving again, enabling the Samaritan to bugger off, I changed tack. I came to a halt and tried to look like someone changing their mind about where to go – which actually is what I was doing.

I checked in the bag I was carrying, hoping the Samaritan was clocking this performance and realising that this poor person had to turn back, probably because I’d left my wallet at home.

I turned, brow furrowed, and retraced my steps, and by the time I was back at the pedestrian crossing the traffic and the Samaritan had moved out of sight, and I was free to get on with my life.

Except…

I thought of all the times, as a driver, that I’ve been annoyed when people milling about near pedestrian crossings don’t cross when you’ve stopped especially for them.

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Once serenely and safely on the other side, she was nobbled by a policeman who happened to be hovering nearby. He said it was illegal to upset the little red man by crossing the road before his little green counterpart was lit up.

I couldn’t get back across the crossing for what seemed a lifetime because the bloody traffic wouldn’t stop. So much for progress.

Stupide is as stupide does Here’s another tale from the pavement. One day my other half was striding towards a very familiar pedestrian crossing in our area of Brussels.

The streets were empty of traffic at a junction where there were clear sightlines for hundreds of yards in every direction. As she reached the curb the lights happened to be in favour of motorists, and there was the usual obligatory red figure up to indicate to pedestrians to wait to cross. Pausing only to appreciate the total silence hanging over a normally busy thoroughfare, she crossed the street, aware that her perception of the prevailing safety requirements was vastly superior to that of the little red figure.

Once serenely and safely on the other side, she was nobbled by a policeman who happened to be hovering nearby. He said it was illegal to upset the little red man by crossing the road before his little green counterpart was lit up.

She pointed out, very politely by her own account, that the entire area was totally devoid of vehicular movement of any kind and that she was therefore exercising her right as a human to override the little red lit-up figure on this occasion because she knew the situation better than he did (I made that last bit up).

The policeman said it was illegal to make a rational judgement in defiance of the little red lit-up figure, and that my other half had to go back to where she came from on the other

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side of the street and stand there until the little green man was lit himself up, not once, but twice. And then she could continue her journey.

Suggestions that the policeman was not dealing with a five-year-old and that the whole thing was “stupide “were greeted with an offer to be taken to the nearest police station to “discuss just how stupide the matter is”.

The alternative was to retrace her steps and wait for two rounds of the lit-up green man, “so that you do not profit from your crime.”

(She wisely avoided prolonging the issue by asking the officer why it seems to be okay for cyclists and kids on scooters, using their own judgement, to routinely ignore red lights on main roads when the going looks clear, seemingly without penalty.)

Both parties in these exchanges were polite and calm, and my other half decided to take up the officer’s kind suggestion of going back and glaring at the little green figure for what seemed like an eternity.

She has no recollection now of whether the cop kept his beady eyes on her as she served her time on the kerb or whether by then he had already scurried away, chuckling to himself, doubtless intent on nobbling another walker for overtaking on a pedestrian crossing.

So next time you’re in your car, seething because you’ve been pulled over for a routine insurance check while some electrified trottinette tearaway whizzes past doing impressive but lethal two-wheel pirouettes in front of a passing bus, take a breath and remember that you are not alone. Somewhere, not far away, an unmotorised pedestrian is probably being breathalysed for exceeding eight kilometres an hour in a built-up area.

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