Recent reports have consistently suggested that Brussels will be facing a mass exodus of companies. A recent study by the Brussels Institute of Statistics and Analysis (BISA) shows that this, in fact, has not been the case over the previous decade.
In recent months, the news was inundated by tales of businesses getting ready to leave Brussels in their droves. These fears appeared to be materialising when Delhaize and Carrefour moved their headquarters to Flanders, and the chocolate manufacturer Leonidas decided to build their new factory in Wallonia.
This argument of an impending company exodus from the capital was later used by opponents of the region's Good Move mobility plan, who released a survey showing that two in three traders would be willing to leave Brussels as the plan would delay deliveries and reduce accessibility for customers.
However, the survey was later found to have been based on misleading figures. Furthermore, a recent report by French-speaking outlet L'Echo appears to prove that far fewer companies are leaving the capital than previously thought.
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On Wednesday, L'Echo released the findings of study conducted by the BISA on the 41,000 migrations relocations of Belgian companies from one Belgian municipality to another between 2009 and 2020.
The figures show that 2,941 companies had moved their head offices outside of the Region of Brussels, with 2,123 moving in. This equates to 818 companies leaving the capital, only 0.6% of all businesses in Brussels.
Furthermore, these findings are not the same according to their respective sectors of activity. For example, while fewer than two in 1,000 companies in the hospitality sector have left Brussels in the last decade, 10 in every 1,000 active businesses in the information and communications sector for example having left the capital.
