Is the Capital of Europe Crumbling Before Our Eyes?
It is essential, warns Vincent Seron, a criminologist at the University of Liège, and Dieter Burssens, a criminologist at Belgium’s National Institute of Criminalistics and Criminology, to take into account the “black number” of crime
When President Donald Trump compared Brussels, Belgium to a “hellhole” in 2016, the statement caused quite a stir, especially in Europe, and was treated with that mixture of contempt, ignorance and denial of reality typical of a certain “elite” in the European Union. Trump had made these remarks in the context of discussions on immigration and security, and suggested that Brussels had changed for the worse over the years, mainly as a result of uncontrolled lawless migratory submersion.
While the facts proved him right at the time, it might be said in 2025 that the Lebanonization of Brussels shows that his judgment was visionary.
Crime explosion
Crime rates are rising everywhere in Brussels, particularly in an area in the spotlight for its frequent shootings: the Bruxelles-Midi Zone (Saint-Gilles, Forest, Anderlecht). Between 2022 and 2023, notes the newspaper L’Echo, robberies and extortion rose by 23%, robberies without weapons by 34%, pickpocketing by 27%, and armed robberies by a staggering 53%. This area is home to five of Brussels’ 15 drug-trafficking “hot spots.” These hot spots are so “hot” in fact, that even the police hesitate to go there.
The Bruxelles-Midi zone therefore unsurprisingly suffers from a severe shortage of police officers — 20% of positions remain unfilled — mainly due to major recruitment difficulties, such as its low level of attractiveness due to crime, which again unsurprisingly scares off applicants. Are we talking about Mexico City? No, just Brussels. In 2023, gang-related shootings left 7 dead and 131 wounded. “Maybe something’s going on in Brussels. It’s a hypothesis that we can put forward,” the Public Prosecutor’s Office gingerly suggested. “Brussels is a large urban center, which therefore attracts people and does not have the most efficient police structure. It’s the only city in the world with six police forces and the federal police, which is no guarantee of good management. The dispersal of resources makes security costly” – and non-existent.
Criminologists have emphasized that these statistics are not sufficient to describe the crime situation in Brussels. It is essential, warns Vincent Seron, a criminologist at the University of Liège, and Dieter Burssens, a criminologist at Belgium’s National Institute of Criminalistics and Criminology, to take into account the “black number” of crime:
