Fresh snub to Belgians in buildings saga

Date: 03/04/1997

By Rory Watson

FOR the second time in a month, an EU institution has snubbed its Belgian hosts by refusing to take over responsibility for buildings in Brussels by the deadline originally laid down for the hand-over.

Just days before the Council of Ministers was due to take charge of its 340-million-ecu Justus Lipsius premises next Thursday (10 April), EU governments decided not to keep to the timetable, claiming they could not do so because there were too many outstanding problems with the building.

“There is a list of items which have not been cleared up yet and EU governments were advised by their lawyers not to take possession of the building until the situation had been clarified,” explained one diplomat.

An inventory drawn up at the end of last year identified six major problems which had to be resolved before the developers could formally hand over the building. The list included water seepage into the building's basement, problems with the enclosure gates and grills, incorrect drainage in the kitchens, frequent breakdowns in the air-conditioning system, wrongly numbered telephone and computer cables and the need to complete a scrambling system for radio-communication devices.

The decision not to accept responsibility for the building by next week's deadline, which was taken by EU deputy ambassadors just before the Easter break, follows similar action - albeit on different grounds - by the European Parliament.

In mid-March, MEPs decided not to take charge of their Brussels Espace Léopold headquarters on 1 April, as originally planned, because of a continuing row over the number of parking spaces which would be available for staff. Under the original contract, the Parliament was promised 2,300 places for staff in the three-building complex, one of the largest office blocks in Europe. But after changes in Belgian environmental legislation, the local authorities set a ceiling of 900.

The Parliament is still insisting that it will only take possession of the premises - and assume the various responsibilities and costs involved - when the original contract has been fully implemented.

Similarly, EU governments are maintaining that the legal and financial uncertainty surrounding responsibility for unfinished work on the Justus Lipsius building - including any repairs which might be needed to work already carried out - should be clarified in an additional contract before the hand-over takes place.

Officials at Belgium's Régie des Bâtiments, which has been liaising between the Council of Ministers and the site's developers, expressed surprise this week at the latest turn of events, but insisted that any postponement would be short-lived.

“When you have the formal hand-over of a project as large as this, there are always some things to sort out. But I feel these could be sorted out within a few weeks,” explained one senior official.