From a mysterious diamond ring gift to a journalist being ejected after the ambassador called the police, the Brussels bash played out less like a birthday party and more like a meticulously stage-managed piece of Trump-era political theatre.
The Belgian diplomat, Patrice Lumumba, and Africa’s sliding doors momentThe killing of Patrice Lumumba, DR Congo’s first democratically-elected prime minister, shaped decades of crisis, failed governments and tension in the Great Lakes region. And the death of the Belgian diplomat who had been due to stand trial in relation to his execution closes a chapter on Belgium’s dark colonial past.
In this episode, Léa Marchal explores the return of austerity across Europe, focusing on Belgium’s 2025 spending cuts under prime minister Bart De Wever. It highlights reductions in welfare and pensions, public backlash, EU deficit rules driving reforms, and concerns that austerity weakens public services while failing to solve long-term economic problems.
“Enough with these caricatures, minister”, Belgium told Israel in a row on X, as Israel accused one of its fiercest EU critics of persecuting Jews.
Top executives at strategic Belgian financial services firm Euroclear, which holds €193bn in Russian assets, previously had French bodyguards.
Samuel Nyabyenda Kwizera, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide and a professional dancer, is married to a Belgian national with whom he has two Belgian children. His life was upended and his family torn apart after Belgian authorities allegedly tampered with his Rwandan passport.
Usually, Danish foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s Facebook posts earn him an endless stream of insults, cynical comments and worse. But this time it was different.
