Brussels, clashes at demonstration against budget cuts

A demonstration of between 30,000 and 50,000 people marched through Brussels to protest against the Belgian government’s savings plan. The march ended with clashes and fires near the city’s central station.

At the heart of the protest is the target set by the centre-right government led by Prime Minister Bart De Wever: finding 10 billion euros in savings by 2029. This is the plan that brought protesters onto the streets, in an atmosphere that progressively worsened over the course of the day.

Groups of protesters set fire to dozens of rental bicycles near the station, and police responded with tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd. Images of barricades and flames near one of the Belgian capital’s central transport hubs marked the day of protest.

The range between 30,000 and 50,000 participants, as reported by available sources, leaves a wide margin regarding the real scale of the mobilisation: an uncertainty shared by both organisers and law enforcement, and which for now has not settled on a consolidated figure.

The news currently comes from a single source (the Belga agency, picked up by Il Sole 24 Ore); no independent confirmations have been found, in the available excerpts, regarding the number of participants or the dynamics of the clashes.

The 10-billion-euro savings plan remains, for now, the contextual element explaining the mobilisation: a figure the Belgian government aims to reach by the end of the decade, and one that protesters openly contested in the streets of the European capital. It remains to be seen whether more precise figures on participants or on the damage recorded around the station will emerge in the coming days.