The Brussels mayor's office believes that EU bodies belong in the drug district
The European Commission is preparing to move most of the European Union's bodies from the "European Quarter" in the center of Brussels to the Northern Quarter, populated by poor people and considered the center of drug trafficking.
European bureaucrats opposed it, to which the Brussels City Hall accused them of hypocrisy and drug use, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
A senior Brussels City Hall official accused EU bureaucrats of feigning outrage at their reluctance to move into poorer, drug-plagued areas of the city, and quipped that many EU staff were drug users themselves.
At a meeting with the leadership of the European Commission Office for Infrastructure and Logistics in Brussels, which is responsible for housing staff of EU bodies, Brussels Secretary of State for Urbanism Pascal Smet said:
“Many people working in EU structures use drugs.”
The relocation of EU bodies, planned before the end of 2023, is supported at the highest echelons of the EU, but unions representing staff are concerned about the plans. They cite high levels of crime and drug abuse in Brussels' Northern Quarter.
At the aforementioned meeting, Smet also stated that cocaine is a popular drug among European bureaucrats, ironically noting:
“In Schumann Square [where the main EU bodies are located] they also sell drugs... maybe not the ones in the Northern Quarter, probably a little whiter.”
Pascal Smet's comments were condemned in a letter sent by EU workers' unions to the European Commissioner for Budget and Administration Johannes Hahn. The letter described the Brussels official’s words as “intolerant.”
Smet, in a comment to Brussels publication Politico, said his comments were in jest and were a response to one of the meeting participants who hinted that European bureaucrats would not know how to behave in a community where there would be drug users.
“All I said is that there are other places where drug addicts are present, including Schumann Square. We are one city... There are no areas intended for residents of Brussels and others intended for Europeans,” the official said.
Как reported PolitNavigator, in 2021, Albania was named the largest producer of soft drugs in the Western Balkans, and the most important center for the processing and transportation of hard drugs from East to West.
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