A city that makes a recipe for success

Date: 13/09/01

By Paul Stephenson

TAKE three large supranational institutions and two smaller committees. Add an assortment of private business, enterprise, interest groups and regional delegations. Place ingredients in a medium-sized city. Mix in flavours and spices from local communities. Pour in diverse languages, nationalities and customs. Stir together and place in urban oven for 40 years. Leave city identity to develop and take shape. Once ready, garnish and decorate capital to fortify its European flavour and identity.

Following the decision to hold all future summits in Brussels, canal-side bike rides and sea-side promenades are a mere remembrance of things past. The question now concerns not where to secure the perfect photo opportunity on official walkabouts between negotiations, but the future role of Brussels as the effective 'Capital of Europe'. It is a highly disputable label.

What special ingredient(s) could make this national and regional capital more palatable to the Union and its citizens when Europe already enjoys a mixed bunch of capital cities? If the EU needs a 'European capital', what can it do for you?

A modern European capital must reflect the principles that have come to represent modern political good practice: transparency, openness and added value.

To translate these abstract notions into action is not easy. They may have been mirrored within architectural forms from the new European Parliament buildings in Brussels and Strasbourg to the Reichstag dome in Berlin - perhaps one day Europe's effective capital - but transferring these values upon a whole city is a more opaque affair.

Brussels is already a colourful urban space of European diversity, welcoming and hosting the arts, business, politics and a mix of international residents - some permanent, others temporary. From Madou to Midi to Montgomery, the city reflects the ethnic and cultural mélange from across the whole continent.

Brussels, like Barcelona and Birmingham, serves as a forum or showcase, classroom or office, drawing board or benchmark, window or mirror, through experimentation and innovation in the arts, education, technology and planning. And as in most cities, these ventures meet with varying degrees of success.

The Belgian capital may play a central role in the shaping of Europe but as a capital for Europe it must nevertheless appeal to the appetite of all its citizens. At a crossroads, tucked up in northern Europe, between the key urban centres of London-Paris-Amsterdam-Cologne, it is, however, distant from much of Europe.

Its location relative to the rest of the continent will become ever more acute as the EU extends eastwards. Greater territorial proximity is impossible making it more urgent than ever that Brussels finds a way to communicate the ideas it is meant to embody to European citizens. As for its identity, Brussels needs to market itself as a model for Europe: a multilingual, medium-sized city of a million people with healthy business, political and cultural lives.

Europe should content itself with a handful of megalopolises (London, Paris, Berlin) and seek to promote sustainable, manageable cities that function cooperatively alongside their urban equals.

Brussels must be a stitch in a large social and political fabric woven with threads of subsidiarity, rather than a oversized knot that holds the Union material together by pulling on all city strings from above. Brussels should be a capital with a small 'c'.

A capital for Europe should serve its local region in close partnership with its similarly-sized siblings in Antwerp and Lille, while sharing knowledge and experience with sister cities from Seville to Stockholm. By accepting some of its own mistakes, Brussels should promote dialogue on issues such as housing, education, transport and multiculturalism.

Yet it should also serve the wider Union by acting as a catalyst for communication, to ensure that as well as facilitating political dialogue in the Council or Parliament or via virtual networks, it creates an environment which encourages social discourse and secures cohesion by engaging the citizen in the shaping and process of integration. A capital for Europe must communicate Europe.

Scale models of every major European symbol from Big Ben to the Arc de Triomphe are already on display at the bizarre Mini-Europe theme park at Heysel, so the need to conjure up a further monument as a testimony to Brussels' role seems dubious.

In fact, if Brussels does need a symbol for a European capital then perhaps it has it already in the Manneken Pis. As a refreshing contrast to the ubiquitous '12 stars of perfection', this puzzling and much derided symbol embodies modesty, innocence and humanity.

As a witness to over 300 years of European history, akin to Copenhagen's mermaid, it is proof that in a Union of nations, stature is not measured in height, appearance or even in voting rights. The small boy is arguably Europe's own miniature Statue of Liberty, equipped to offer reassurance to smaller states.

Essentially, Brussels is a city, community and region but also the urban face of commitment to cooperation. Its symbols are numerous; its identities as a capital are multiple and implicit. Brussels doesn't need to brandish an extra passport to be a European capital - one that should be accepted everywhere.

• Paul Stephenson, 27, is a PhD research student in European integration at Cambridge University, UK.

A runner-up in the European Voice 'Brussels: a Capital for Europe' essay contest.