The capital of the Burgundian empire
Philipp the Good’s accession to the throne in 1430 brought Brabant into the Burgundian empire, which now stretched from the north of the Netherlands to Switzerland. From now on, Brussels' inhabitants had the task of persuading him to make the city his political centre in the principalities of the Netherlands. Located on today’s Place Royale, renovation and transformation of the ducal palace of Coudenberg required significant financial sacrifices from the city and the Brabant states and it lasted 29 years.
Philipp only began to spend extended periods at the ducal palace after the building of the ceremonial chamber, the Aula Magna, which started in 1452. A marvel of gothic style, decorated with statues and tapestries which have been changed throughout the centuries, from the start it hosted a constant stream of lavish parties, receptions and tournaments. Several important events, such as the abdication of Charles V also took place here. You can now visit its cellars under the cobbles of the Place Royale, the rest having been destroyed by the fire that devastated the palace in the 18th century.
A first opportunity missed with the headquarters of the ECSC
A continual bone of contention between the Member States of the European Union is the recurrent issue of the location of the institutions’ headquarters. The first debate took place in Paris when the first European Community, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), was established.
At the Paris conference, in July 1952, France and Germany supported the bid of Saarbrücken, whose international status would also have settled the question of the Saarland, an issue outstanding since the war. But unlike France, Germany did not want it to become a European district, while other Member States preferred to decentralise and spread the institutions across the candidate cities.
All states would have happily accepted Brussels as a compromise solution but, quite unexpectedly, the Belgian government defended the bid of Liège, located at the geographical centre of the north European oil and steel field and at a crossroads of transport links.
Worn out by two days of talks, ministers agreed to the suggestion to provisionally house the institutions in Luxembourg, with the Parliamentary Assembly being temporarily located in the chamber of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
Val Duchesse, birthplace of the Treaty of Rome
After the failure of the European Defense Community (EDC) in 1954, the Foreign Affairs Ministers of the six founding members of the European Union decided to further European integration at the Messina conference in 1955. They commissioned a panel of experts to study the specific implications of creating an integrated economic market covering all industrial and agricultural production. The re-launching process and the negotiation of the Treaties establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) chiefly took place in the Val Duchesse’s castle located on the edge of the Forêt de Soignes.
Once the report had been endorsed in 1956 in Venice by the conference of Foreign Affairs Ministers, the negotiations leading up to the treaties took more than eight months of intense bargaining in the same building. They culminated in the signing of the Treaty of Rome on 25th March 1957.
The separation of the headquarters
When the Treaty of Rome was signed, the issue of the location of the institution’s headquarters had wisely been put to one side to avoid it slowing down its ratification by the Member States. Despite being convinced of the need to locate all European institutions in one place, the participants in the Paris conference which had been organised in January 1958 to address this issue could not reach the consensus required by the Treaty.
In the meantime, Europe’s administrative departments were set up in Brussels, while the executive were meant to meet alternatively in Brussels and Luxembourg. This happened less and less, for obvious practical reasons. The parliament remained in Strasbourg. This state of affairs strengthened the position of Brussels, where everything was done to make officials’ and delegations’ lives easier.
The issue of a single site came up again when the executive bodies of the ECSC, the EEC and Euratom were merged. With the threat of losing the ECSC High Authority, Luxembourg demanded compensatory measures. A compromise – which became a permanent arrangement at the 1992 Edinburgh European Council – was finally found:
- Brussels would keep most Commission departments, the Secretariat of the Council of Ministers, the Economic and Social Committee and host the meetings of Parliament’s committees and political groups.
- Luxembourg would host a quarterly meeting of the Council of Ministers and be home to the Court of Justice, the Parliament Secretariat and the European Investment Bank. The Court of Auditors was also based here when it was created.
- The European Parliament’s plenary sessions would be held in Strasbourg.
Thibault Courbot
OIB
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