The figures laid out by Brussels’ chief prosecutor this week were stark enough to jolt even the most world-weary observers of Belgium’s capital.
Fifty-seven shootings in the city so far this year, twenty of them since the start of summer. In a metropolis that styles itself as the administrative heart of Europe, gun crime — much of it rooted in the drug trade — is no longer a distant underworld phenomenon. It is a daily hazard, playing out on streets only a short walk from the EU’s glass-fronted institutions.
Julien Moinil, the city’s chief prosecutor, was not in the mood for platitudes when he addressed reporters earlier this week. The statistics he cited — 6,211 adult suspects and 874 minors arraigned by his office since January, a threefold increase on last year — were not presented as evidence of success, but of the scale of the problem. Among them, he said, were 1,250 suspected drug dealers, an army of street-level operatives feeding a trade that fuels both profit and violence.
Moinil’s central message was blunt: the justice system is not idle, but it is fighting with one hand tied behind its back. Murder cases in Brussels are solved at a high rate, he insisted, but the deeper malaise is the product of “10 or 15 years of lax policies” — a culture of permissiveness towards organised crime, chronic underinvestment in law enforcement, and political reluctance to confront the drug market head-on. The result is a public order crisis that cannot, in his words, “be fixed in six months.”
The subtext is hard to miss. Brussels has, for years, been warned about the infiltration of its neighbourhoods by well-organised, heavily armed narcotics gangs. Yet political debate has often shied away from the sustained funding and legislative toughness needed to uproot them. Instead, policy-makers have leant on piecemeal initiatives and photo-op crackdowns, rarely addressing the structural issues that allow such groups to entrench themselves.
Moinil’s frustration is not simply about crime on the streets, but about what happens after suspects are arrested. The Brussels Federal Judicial Police, he noted, still suffers major staffing shortages, even as magistrates have been added to the prosecutor’s ranks. The imbalance means investigations are slow to develop, intelligence is not acted upon quickly enough, and case backlogs lengthen. The impact is cumulative: if gangs believe police will not have the resources to pursue them to the end, the deterrent value of an arrest is weakened.
Nor does the problem end at the prison gates. In a damning aside, Moinil warned that leaders of criminal organisations are continuing to run their networks from behind bars.
This is a familiar refrain in Belgium, where high-profile trials have revealed inmates ordering hits, directing drug shipments, and managing finances from their cells. The prosecutor’s call for tighter prison security — particularly against the smuggling of mobile phones and other communication devices — is as much about restoring public confidence as it is about operational necessity.
The question of immigration enforcement is another fault line. Moinil argued that foreign nationals living illegally in Belgium who are arrested for criminal offences should be deported far more swiftly. This is a politically charged proposition, likely to divide opinion in a city that prides itself on cosmopolitan openness. Yet it reflects a practical concern among police and prosecutors: that deportation, when legally justified and properly executed, can be one of the few swift means of disrupting the activities of repeat offenders.
Beyond policing and prosecution, Moinil’s remarks point to a social challenge that cannot be ignored. He urged a “comprehensive health policy” to address drug abuse in the capital, signalling that enforcement alone will not drain the market for illicit substances.
Brussels’ experience mirrors that of other European cities where crack cocaine and synthetic drugs have found eager consumers not just in marginalised communities, but among professionals and students. Without a strategy that cuts demand — through prevention, treatment, and public awareness — every dealer arrested will quickly be replaced.
That such warnings must be repeated, year after year, suggests an absence of political urgency. Belgium’s complex federal structure, with policing and justice split between different layers of government, breeds both inertia and the temptation to pass responsibility elsewhere. In Brussels, municipal authorities, the regional government, and the federal state all have a hand in public security, but too often their efforts are fragmented and reactive.
The international dimension complicates matters further. As the seat of NATO and the EU, Brussels attracts a transient population, a vast diplomatic community, and the attention of transnational criminal syndicates who see opportunity in the city’s unique status. Policing such an environment requires a level of coordination and intelligence capability that the city’s current resources cannot provide.
Moinil’s press conference, then, was less a plea for sympathy than a challenge to Belgium’s political class. More magistrates, more police officers, tighter prison controls, quicker deportations, and a serious public health response to drug addiction — none of these are radical ideas, but each requires sustained political will, financial commitment, and the courage to withstand criticism from entrenched interest groups.
The danger, as ever, is that the statistics that so alarmed the prosecutor will fade from public consciousness until the next spate of shootings forces them back into the headlines. Brussels cannot afford such complacency. For a city that aspires to be the nerve centre of Europe, it is a matter not only of public safety but of credibility. Visitors, investors, and residents alike need to believe that its streets are not ceded to drug gangs and gunmen.
In the end, Moinil’s diagnosis is correct: a decade or more of drift cannot be undone overnight. But the longer Brussels waits to confront the entrenched reality of drug-fuelled violence, the more likely it is that today’s grim numbers will look modest compared to those in the years to come.
