Vincent Calay believes that Brussels should belong to all Europeans

Vincent Calay, a professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, considers that initiatives aimed at rendering the Belgian capital even more European are not sufficient. "It doesn't seem to occur to anyone that to define Brussels as the capital of Europe does not simply imply keeping the declining federal capital alive, nor does it mean creating a sexy product with which to show caricatured tourists a saccharin image of relations between Brussels and Europe. ... To define Brussels as the European capital is to believe that a town can be appropriated by a European public from a distance, which means accepting that not only people from Brussels, but the whole of Europe should benefit from the right to decide on the future of the town ! ... It means opening the town up to a new and alternative appropriation that distances itself from the cliché of 'Brussels say-so'."

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