The Shipwreck that is Belgium is a Wake-Up Call for Europe

Last week’s letter from an investigative judge—written under police protection, pleading for security against drug traffickers—was more than a cry of professional despair. It was the sound of a nation cracking. “We are no longer able to protect our citizens and ourselves,” the judge wrote. After four months in a safe house, the magistrate has been left with no state support, no compensation, and an invisible line of threats stretching into every corner of the justice system. The letter’s tone was restrained—and all the more devastating for it. Here was a judge admitting that Belgium is, in effect, evolving into a narco-state.

None of it is that much of a shock at all—the evidence has been mounting for years. Antwerp, Europe’s second-busiest port, has become the continent’s main gateway for cocaine. In 2023, Belgian authorities seized nearly 120 tonnes of the drug—a record haul, and yet only a fraction of what is ultimately allowed to pass through. The city’s suburbs are scarred by gang wars, drive-by shootings, and car bombings. Judges and police live under constant threat.

But the narco trade is only the visible symptom of a deeper disease. Belgium’s administrative machinery has ossified. Political paralysis has become normal: between 2010 and 2011, the country set a world record for the longest period without a functioning government—589 days. Later, the country was without a cabinet for a stunning 652 days—between 2018 and 2020. Its bureaucracy is labyrinthine, its taxes crushing, and public debt is rapidly approaching 110% of GDP. The country’s two linguistic communities, Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia, share little except a flag and a king.

The realm has been undergoing quite the fall. From the early twentieth century, when Belgium ranked among the world’s richest nations, an early industrial power whose steel, textiles, and machinery filled global markets, Belgium has shrunk to today’s debt-ridden mess. Productivity growth has been flat for more than a decade. Unemployment in Brussels is at around 15%, while public expenditure consumes more than half of national income (54.4% of GDP). The welfare system is vast and generous, but also at a breaking point.

Add to this the strains of rapid demographic change. Belgium now has one of Europe’s highest rates of immigration relative to population. In Brussels, fewer than 22% of residents have two Belgian-born parents. 42% of Brussels’ population was of non-European origin back in 2021; figures are even worse today. The city’s schools struggle with overcrowding, linguistic fragmentation, and uneven integration.

Ultimately, this is self-evident to all. The police know it, the magistrates know it, and ordinary citizens know it. What is missing is the political courage to say so plainly. For years, Belgium’s leaders have consoled themselves with the notion that, as the capital of Europe, their country’s problems are everyone’s problems—and therefore, somehow, no one’s responsibility. They have presided over the suicide of what has, historically, been one of the most successful regions of the European continent—and left it a failed state.

The Belgian catastrophe is a warning to Europe. The very forces corroding the rule of law in the country—institutional implosion, mass street violence, the drug economy, and uncontrolled migration networks—are rapidly spreading through the whole of Europe. In Belgium, they have combined unusually early and explosively. Elsewhere, they are only gathering momentum.

And what, if anything, is to be learned from Belgium’s naufrage? When judges have to hide their addresses, when mayors require personal guards, and when citizens stop expecting justice to be done, then the social contract has already frayed. It’s when the demise of a community leads to the disappearance of the state itself. Ugly as things may be, it might yet be possible to stop, indeed reverse, the third-worldisation of the kingdom. But the first step is to acknowledge that the crisis exists, that it is structural, and that nothing will be sorted out at this point without a proverbial ‘breaking of eggs.’

The time for action is here. It is now. In Belgium, the fight against the narco-mafias must be waged with the same seriousness once reserved for counter-terrorism. And the political class must recover the moral fortitude to understand that public order is not an optional luxury, but the precondition for prosperity and a decent common life. But, if the deeper malaise is not dealt with, police action will be nothing more than a palliative. If Belgians want to free their country from the shackles of foreign organised crime, they will, sooner or later, be forced to understand that Belgium will not return to being like it used to be unless it becomes more Belgian again. Will its people rise to the challenge? And will its government find the courage for the task? Whether they do or not is today, indeed, a matter of national survival.