Brussels, the self-proclaimed capital of the European Union, is no longer the beacon of a united Europe, but an advanced symptom of its disintegration. For the past 15 years, the signs of a deep crisis -- political paralysis, an explosion in crime, fiscal bankruptcy, the rise of Islamism and migratory engulfment -- have been piling up, heralding an inevitable tipping point.
The normalization of radical Islamic and anti-Semitic discourse we are witnessing in Brussels is the result of 15 years of leaders abrogating their responsibility. Brussels, through its inability -- or unwillingness -- to make unpleasant but necessary choices, is setting itself up as the first potential locus of protracted European unrest. Even Politico recognizes the scale of the problem. The only question is: When will the Belgian state recognize the failure of a society that has given up on governing itself according to a common law?
1. Structural political paralysis
Almost a year after the regional elections of June 2024, the Brussels-Capital Regional Parliament has yet to produce a governing majority. The traditional parties such as the Socialist Party (PS), the Reformist Movement (MR) and Open VLD - are bogged down in fruitless negotiations, unable to overcome their ideological differences and their fear of offending the different factions of their electorates.
The PS, openly Islamized, refuse any agreement with the centrist parties, preferring to ally itself with the Islamist Team Fouad Ahidar (TFA), a party founded in 2024 by Ahidar, a politician of Moroccan descent who has been a member of the Brussels parliament since 2004, previously representing the PS. The marxist Workers' Party of Belgium (PTB), with 16.1% of the vote in Brussels in 2024, also allies itself with TFA.
TFA embodies a new situation: a political Islam that no longer hides its identity. Instead, it advocates that a religious identity be the underpinning of national cohesion. This fragmentation reflects a profound breakdown in the social contract, between the old European society, which confines religion to the private sphere, and the "new Europeans" (Muslims), who want everything to be subject to their religious doctrine.
Georges-Louis Bouchez, president of the center-right MR, has warned that alliances with forces such as the PTB and the Islamist TFA are "undermining the foundations of liberal democracy."
The paralysis in the government deprives Brussels of any capacity to deal with the crises that are fast piling up.
2. Endemic crime, the result of a failing state
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."
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. The reason: the high level of crime.
Districts such as Molenbeek, Schaerbeek and Anderlecht have become places where the lack of security is a life-threatening reality, marked by assaults, drug trafficking, shootings and clashes between gangs.
The murder of a police officer, Thomas Montjoie, on November 10, 2022 in Schaerbeek by Yassine Mahi, an Islamist who had telegraphed his intention to attack police officers on social networks, sparked a deep anger within the police force. Days later, thousands of police officers demonstrated outside the Palais de Justice in Brussels to denounce the absence of both security and any judicial action in the face of violent radicalization.
These failures are, as they say, just the tip of the iceberg: the Belgian justice system releases multi-recidivist delinquents and jihadists. In May 2025, not for the first time, riots involving "youth gangs" rocked several communities. Vehicles were set on fire along with countless attacks on police. The inability to restore law and order has been transforming entire neighborhoods into enclaves where Belgian law no longer applies, and foreshadows their balkanization into Islamic no-go-zones.
3. Inevitable bankruptcy
The Brussels-Capital Region is not merely on the brink of bankruptcy; it is already at the bottom of a financial abyss. In 2024, the regional government's revenues amounted to €5.69 billion, while expenditures reached €6.99 billion euros -- a deficit of more than 20%. Public debt exceeded €10 billion—a staggering 300% of annual revenue -- for a city of just 1.1 million inhabitants.
This situation, compounded by decades of government hand-outs -- subsidies to community associations, ill-targeted social programs and chaotic management of infrastructure (the roads in Brussels are notoriously the worst maintained in Europe) -- makes bankruptcy imminent. Public services, such as transportation, schools and hospitals, are deteriorating, while dependence on federal transfers of money exposes Brussels to systemic risk. If civil servants' salaries or social benefits, which support 30% of Brussels households, were to be suspended, social anger, already seen in recurrent demonstrations, could turn into widespread insurrection.
4. The seemingly unstoppable rise of Islam and anti-Semitism - for the simple reason that no one is stopping them or even trying to
In 2024, Team Fouad Ahidar, driven by Islamic doctrines, achieved significant electoral success, winning three seats in the Brussels-Capital Regional Parliament. Ahidar, who advocates a Muslim identity ahead of any national allegiance, embodies the emergence of an uncomplicated political Islam.
"Fouad Ahidar is a proven pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic figure who served as a member of parliament in Brussels for twenty years," notes Claude Moniquet, a retired journalist and former French intelligence agent.
Ahidar represents only a small part of the wave of antisemitism in Brussels. Jew-hatred, often marketed in unconvincing, transparent disguises as "anti-Zionism," flourishes in many other Islamic-centered and radical left-wing circles. In 2023 alone, anti-Semitic incidents in Belgium -- including physical assaults and vandalizing synagogues -- rose by 65%, mainly in Brussels and Antwerp.
After Hamas's Iranian-backed invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, many of Brussels' elected representatives made speeches on the "Palestinian resistance", while others denounced "the barbarity of the terrorist state of Israel". In Brussels, the Islamically-inspired terrorist organization Samidoun was still well established, even though it had already been banned in several European countries, including Germany. In short, in Brussels, Jew-hatred enjoys almost total impunity.
5. An uncontrolled flood of migrants
For the past decade, Brussels has been under immigration pressures unparalleled in Europe. As of 2023, 74% of Brussels' population is of foreign background, compared to a European average of 10%. In areas such as Molenbeek, the proportion reaches 86%. This demographic transformation or "great replacement," far from being accompanied by an effective integration policy, has saturated Brussels -- overcrowded schools, overwhelmed hospitals, sorely inadequate housing -- and exacerbated communal tensions.
In 2022, a report revealed that 35% of young people with an immigrant background in Brussels were living in households where nobody has a job -- a breeding ground for delinquency and radicalization. Immigration flows, fed by clandestine people-smuggling networks by way of Turkey and North Africa, continue to expand, while reception centers for "asylum seekers" are already full. The 2015-2016 jihad attacks in Paris (130 murdered) and Brussels (32 murdered), by Muslims radicalized in neighborhoods such as Molenbeek, revealed the consequences of Europe's lax immigration policy. The Belgian authorities, and Brussels in particular, seem to have learned nothing.
Prognosis: Imminent uprisings
Brussels is not only a city in crisis, it is a city on the brink of implosion. The convergence of political paralysis, the disintegration of law and order, budgetary bankruptcy, Islamist sectarianism, Jew-hatred and uncontrolled immigration mark a slippery slope toward violence and chaos. Military intervention, as a desperate response to uncontrollable unrest, might eventually be needed. On that day, the globalist elites, who have turned a blind eye to so many signals, will bear responsibility for a disaster they could have prevented. Brussels, far from being an isolated case, is a small mirror of a Europe that is faltering.
Drieu Godefridi is a jurist (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain), philosopher (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain) and PhD in legal theory (Paris IV-Sorbonne). He is an entrepreneur, CEO of a European private education group and director of PAN Medias Group. He is the author of The Green Reich (2020).
Alan Bennett