Search for symbol of Brussels spells hypocrisy with capital H

Date: 07/06/01

Now that the future of Europe debate is well under way - at least among the EU's chattering classes - Commission President Romano Prodi and Belgian premier Guy Verhofstadt have decided to launch another parlour-room discussion about the role of Brussels as Europe's capital.

To kick-start the process, the EU's two most fecund federalists invited a posse of European intellectuals, including Umberto 'Name of the Rose' Eco and Nicholas 'Swatch' Hayek, to Brussels last week.

In time-honoured fashion, local residents - who have seen rents skyrocket, roads clogged and whole streets torn down to make way for the EU's ever-growing institutions - were not on the invitation list.

The aim of the brainstorming session was to mull over what ingredients are needed to make Brussels a true European capital following December's decision by Union leaders to hold all EU summits in the Michelin star-studded city. Eco, who chaired the talkfest, was the first to see the absurdity of flying in a bunch of intellectuals to float ideas but no solutions.

He later told reporters that themeeting was "completely artificial because Prodi has got together all these irresponsible people...to find ideas and symbols for something which doesn't exist yet."

Opening the meeting, Prodi said: "I want Brussels to become a place that all citizens of Europe can relate to." It is true that at present, the EU area of

Brussels is hardly the best advertisement for the 15-member club. American travel writer Bill Bryson once described Brussels as a "seriously ugly place, full of wet litter, boulevards like freeways and muddy building sites. It is a city of grey offices and faceless office workers, the briefcase capital of Europe".

This is a little bit unfair to a city that boasts such jewels as the Grand Place and the Sablon Square. But most would agree that the EU ghetto of the capital is a soulless place to work and a dispiriting place to visit. If you are in any doubt about this, just look at the horrified faces of tourists who are dragged around the Union's headquarters on bus tours.

Many people are responsible for turning the city's old Bohemian quarter into a concrete jungle. Greedy speculators, incompetent town-planners and blind-eyed council officials have all played their part. But the EU institutions bear the brunt of the burden for sanctioning the construction of characterless office blocks with mega car parks below and walls of windows above.

Now the EU wants to make amends, but it seems to be going about it in typically top-down fashion. Participants at last week's meeting were "asked to contribute ideas on how the European capital can be symbolised", according to a Commission press release. "The Cinquantenaire arch is the symbol for the capital of Belgium, but what would its equivalent be for the capital of Europe?" asked Prodi.

A decade ago, the answer would have been obvious - a butter mountain. These days, it's a bit more difficult to think of a monument that can both "represent common values and celebrate Europe's diversity", as the press statement puts it. A statue of the all-conquering French football team perhaps? A photomontage of past Eurovision Song Contest winners maybe?

The real question is not what sort of symbol best sums up Europe, but whether Brussels needs another statue for pigeons to perch on. The EU already has a flag that you see waved only at Ryder Cup golf matches and an anthem that you hear played only at single currency launches. Do we now need a Soviet-style monument to the Union's vanity as well?

There are already a few of these littered around the EU area and they are uniformly awful. Outside the Commission's Berlaymont headquarters, which used to be one of the EU's few symbols until asbestos was discovered there almost a decade ago, lies a particularly crass monument celebrating European Year of the Environment. The problem is that you can hardly read the inscription because it is blackened by fumes from one of Brussels' most polluted streets.

Someone once joked that the difference between chronic and manic depressives was that chronics built castles in the sky but manics lived in them. No one is accusing EU leaders of being that delusional, but instead of dreaming up symbols, myths and other artificial trappings of statehood, they would do better to tackle real people's problems such as poverty, pollution and unemployment.

And if they really want some bright ideas for making Brussels a 'true European capital', they should invite the real people to have their say instead of leaving it to their favourite intellectuals. Gareth Harding

Critical feature on the initiative launched by Romano Prodi and Guy Verhofstadt to give Brussels a European identity.