The Belgian Government and the European Commission have been leading exclusive negotiations for months on a real estate transaction worth nearly 1 €billion, as part of a plan to revamp the European Quarter in Brussels.
According to a source familiar with the matter, the Belgian public holding company (SFPI-FPIM) wants to buy 23 old buildings in Brussels, reports L’Echo on Thursday.
The European Commission intends to sell most of the real estate in its Brussels portfolio, amounting to 350.000 m2 of office buildings in the Leopold neighbourhood. The Commission would keep its headquarters in the current Berlaymont building.
In 2021, the EU commission announced it would leave half of its Brussels offices by 2030, due to high rates of remote work among staff and the need to make its offices ‘greener’. The European Green Deal mandates a 55% reduction of CO2 emissions, but the Commission itself still has many outdated buildings.
For years the city of Brussels has wished to reorganise the European Quarter to foster a diversity of activities and residents, L’Echo reports. The authorities would like to have more residential and commercial establishments in the area, as well as social housing. They fear that if the Commission were to sell its real estate to the highest bidder, potential buyers would construct enormous office buildings in order to make their investment as profitable as possible.
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The plan is for the Belgian public holding company to acquire the buildings, and then allocate them to different real estate developers to refurbish them. This way, they hope to get back some of the money on the 1 €billion transaction.
The European Commission is set to relocate some of its offices to the Brussels Northern Quarter by the end of the year, in a move that would help it reach its environmental goals, but that has upset many staff workers.
