The Brussels of the East
Arriving in Bucharest on Tuesday on my way to a conference in the Romanian city of Brasov, I was struck by the similarities to my home city of Brussels: the heavy rain, the aggressive driving, the poorly-maintained pavements, the odouriferous streets, the art nouveau buildings scattered among ugly and ill-planned modern developments, and especially the monumental building projects pandering to the egos of cruel despots.
In the case of Brussels these are the Palais de Justice and the Basilique, the former, the largest stone building in Europe, the latter, the fifth largest church in the world. Both were built in the late 19th century at the behest of King Leopold II, using the massive profits garnered from his personal fiefdom of the Belgian Congo, monies accrued from mines and rubber plantations worked by a population terrorised by Leopold's army of mercenaries. Adam Hochschild, the historian who wrote 'King Leopold's Ghost', estimates that four to eight million Congolese died as a consequence of the man's greed and megalomania.
Romania's Leopold II is of course Nicolae Ceasescu, who, before his bloody overthrow in 1989, set about wasting vast sums of his country's money on the notorious People's Palace , the third largest office building in the world (behing the Pentagon and the Potala Palace in Lhasa), and the Boulevard of Socialist Victory, a four-kilometre-long road lined with showpiece apartments and fountains that leads up to the palace. Some 40,000 people were forcibly relocated and much of Bucharest's historic centre - including its Jewish quarter - was destroyed to feed Ceausescu's monstrous ego (another echo of Leopold, who razed much of Brussels' working-class Marolles district to make way for his Palais de Justice).
Today, the People's Palace is home to the Romanian parliament and has been renamed the Palace of Parliament. However, such is the scale of the building that much of it remains unoccupied. It therefore seems like a perfect opportunity for Bucharest to become the 'Brussels of the East' in another way. After Romanian accession to the EU in 2007, why not move the monthly travelling circus of the European Parliament from Strasbourg to the Palace of Parliament? The Eurocrats would certainly feel at home in Bucharest and it would be a great sign of faith in the project of EU expansion. And, for the Eurosceptics out there, it would give a whole new generation a reason to hate Ceasescu's eyesore.
In the case of Brussels these are the Palais de Justice and the Basilique, the former, the largest stone building in Europe, the latter, the fifth largest church in the world. Both were built in the late 19th century at the behest of King Leopold II, using the massive profits garnered from his personal fiefdom of the Belgian Congo, monies accrued from mines and rubber plantations worked by a population terrorised by Leopold's army of mercenaries. Adam Hochschild, the historian who wrote 'King Leopold's Ghost', estimates that four to eight million Congolese died as a consequence of the man's greed and megalomania.
Romania's Leopold II is of course Nicolae Ceasescu, who, before his bloody overthrow in 1989, set about wasting vast sums of his country's money on the notorious People's Palace , the third largest office building in the world (behing the Pentagon and the Potala Palace in Lhasa), and the Boulevard of Socialist Victory, a four-kilometre-long road lined with showpiece apartments and fountains that leads up to the palace. Some 40,000 people were forcibly relocated and much of Bucharest's historic centre - including its Jewish quarter - was destroyed to feed Ceausescu's monstrous ego (another echo of Leopold, who razed much of Brussels' working-class Marolles district to make way for his Palais de Justice).
Today, the People's Palace is home to the Romanian parliament and has been renamed the Palace of Parliament. However, such is the scale of the building that much of it remains unoccupied. It therefore seems like a perfect opportunity for Bucharest to become the 'Brussels of the East' in another way. After Romanian accession to the EU in 2007, why not move the monthly travelling circus of the European Parliament from Strasbourg to the Palace of Parliament? The Eurocrats would certainly feel at home in Bucharest and it would be a great sign of faith in the project of EU expansion. And, for the Eurosceptics out there, it would give a whole new generation a reason to hate Ceasescu's eyesore.
Labels: On the road
posted by Justin Toland at 1:45 pm
1 Comments:
Speaking as a Eurocrat myself (and literally having just returned from Strasbourg), I can safely say that if you were to take a straw poll of staff at the EP, I am fairly sure that 99% of us would vote against the monthly trip. Not that I have anything against Strasbourg per se, it is just extremely difficult to travel there, so I don't think that Brassó (as I prefer to think of it) would be a viable option - think of how much more of the taxpayer's money would be squandered on transporting all the "cantines" (document trunks) across the motorways. Remember that it is purely on the insistence of the French that we are uprooted, a farcical exercise, which undermines the Parliament's credibility through no fault of its own. Once I have more time I will read these tales of Transylvania (a part of the world I know well) properly to see how your impressions compare with my initial ones (see http://www.redemptionblues.com/?p=112). And thanks for the sidebar link, by the way. I have been lurking on your site since I discovered it.g
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