WRITTEN QUESTION E-3029/01

by Piia-Noora Kauppi (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(30 October 2001)

Subject: Insecurity of the Brussels European quarter

Staff of the Union institutions have too often been the victims of mugging and attempted robbery near their place of work, the European quarter.

On 6 June 2001, for example, a woman was reported to have been attacked behind the Charlemagne Building. The attackers tried to snatch her handbag and kicked her until they were eventually scared off by the horn of a passing car. The police came to the scene but were unable to arrest the attackers, because they could not be identified beyond doubt. On the same day a man was assaulted at the Schuman metro station by persons answering the description of the attackers implicated in the first incident. Before these cases occurred, a woman had been attacked and brutally kicked at the entrance to the Maelbeek metro station in rue de la Loi. Women in particular, as well as staff who work late, are afraid to move about in the area concerned for fear of robbery and other crimes.

1. Have the appropriate Commission departments informed the local security authorities in exact detail of the assaults on Commission staff, as well as impressing upon them that the situation is totally intolerable, especially where female employees are concerned?

2. Have they ascertained how the local authorities intend to remedy the insecurity of the European quarter?

3. What practical steps will the Commission take to improve the security situation for its staff?

Answer given by Mr Kinnock on behalf of the Commission

(7 December 2001)

The Protocol and Security Service of the Commission is fully aware of the reports referred to by the Honourable Member. In late May and early June 2001, there were a number of violent attacks in the neighbourhood of the European Institutions, carried out by persons answering the same description. Victims included local shopkeepers.

These were, however, relatively isolated incidents; records show that, by comparison with the rest of the Brussels region or with other European cities, such attacks are not very frequent in the European quarter.

The Commission's Protocol and Security Service is in regular contact with Belgian judicial authorities and with the federal and local police, to whom it passes on details (place, time, description of aggressors) of any reported incidents that involve officials or other servants of the European Institutions, or the buildings they occupy.

As a result, policing in the neighbourhood has been reinforced. The area from the Cinquantenaire Park to the rue de la Science, and from the rue Joseph II to the Léopold Park, is now under closer supervision by police patrols, both on foot and in cars. Periodically the two Parks are also patrolled by mounted federal police.

While the Commission's Protocol and Security Service has no authority to act outside the Commission's own premises, it provides assistance to members of staff who are victims of crime. In the first half of this year, the Service, in close collaboration with other European institutions and the Belgian authorities, organised a series of lectures, which included talks by police officers, demonstrations of equipment and the distribution of information about crime and how to avoid being a victim.

As a service to Commission staff the Protocol and Security Service will shortly be posting accessible crime prevention advice on the Institution's intranet site.