Brussels is no Beirut, but it's an increasingly dangerous place if you happen to be a Eurocrat. Burglary, assault, murder. You name the crime, this city will supply the weapon of choice.
The latest victim is Jean-Pierre Leng, a Eurocrat who has done stints as EU ambassador in Geneva and Tokyo. Leng left town for a weekend to visit his native France. Professional burglars discovered his absence, forced entry into his residence in well-heeled Uccle, broke into a safe box and absconded with several million Belgian francs worth of foreign currency.
Dietrich von Kyaw, Germany's ambassador to the EU, reports that several of his staff have had their homes ransacked. One colleague lost antiques valued at DM1m. At least two other EU ambassadors attending diplomatic receptions say their limousines have been hijacked at gunpoint.
The only sensible response is to call the police, right? Wrong. Last year, von Kyaw's Italian chauffeur was waiting to pick up his excellency when two Brussels policeman pulled over and ordered the driver to step out of the official Mercedes. The chauffeur protested, citing diplomatic immunity. Half an hour later, this loyal servant of the German state was sitting in a police cell, minus three front teeth.
Von Kyaw has spent two months seeking an explanation from the Belgian authorities. Nothing has happened. Not a whisper of an apology, either. Von Kyaw is spitting with rage, but he is loath to turn it into a diplomatic incident.
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violence is nothing new in Belgium. Everyone remembers the Brabant supermarket killings when hitmen shot shoppers at random, a few of whom were suspected Mafiosi. The other week, gangsters opened fire on an armoured delivery van with sub-machine guns and a bazooka. Today, stickers are still plastered on shop walls in memory of Julie and Melissa, the two eight-year-olds abducted and tortured by a convicted child rapist and buried in a shed under several feet of cement.
What is new is that Belgians are starting to ask hard questions about the causes of violent crime. The child murders have shaken faith in the political establishment, but also in an impartial judiciary which has been too susceptible to political manipulation. Yet the system plays both ways.
Last month, almost half a million people protested in Brussels against the dismissal of Marc Connerotte, the crusading anti-corruption magistrate sacked for attending a fund-raiser organised by the parents of the murdered children.
The marchers aroused worldwide sympathy, but they ignored the fact that Connerotte, through his gesture of solidarity with the victims, had sacrificed his impartiality. Their message was that since everyone else was breaking the rules, one more transgression would not do any harm. Hardly the recipe for saving the system.
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as for the spate of Brussels burglaries, theories abound about the upsurge in criminal activity. One is that the locals are finally getting their revenge after nearly 40 years of Eurocracy occupying the best property in the city centre and the best residences out in Uccle, Woluw?, and Rhodes-Ste-Gen?ve. The other is that high-living criminals are sending a signal to Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene who insists that Maastricht style deflation is the only way to qualify for the single currency.
Dehaene belongs to the exclusive club of European leaders such as Helmut Kohl who genuinely believe that the single currency is necessary to save "Europe." Jacques Chirac almost certainly does not believe this nonsense, but he is willing to indulge Helmut because alternatives such as the British model free trade zone or a looser, wider Europe stretching to the borders of Ukraine look dodgy.
The upshot is that Europe is in a race against the clock to meet the 1999 deadline for Emu before a) riots in Paris topple the government; b) unemployment in Germany tops 5m; c) Italy splits in two under the strains of reining in its budget deficit and record debt.
The first sign of how things are progressing will come at the December European summit in Dublin when EU leaders will attempt to agree a blueprint for the post Emu world. In the meantime, spare a thought for Alexei Lautenberg, the suave Swiss ambassador to the EU, whose country would easily qualify for Emu but remains resolutely opposed to EU membership.
Lautenberg was strolling through the Bois de la Cambre the other day when he chanced upon a dead body. Like all upstanding citizens, he reported his discovery to the police. The next day he looked in a local newspaper. Nothing. Nor the next day, nor the day after that. And so he got back in touch with the local constabulary. Was there nothing unusual about a dead body in the middle of Brussels? Should the local burghers not be told?
The answer, as they say, was a diplomatic silence.
