The view from Europe: Avenue De Beaullieu

Published on Tuesday 29 July 2008 01:28

WHAT'S in a name? I have been taken to task by a number of readers, in e-mails and letters, for labelling this column "Avenue de Beaulieu". Some have doubted my acquaintance with Brussels or the European Union, claiming there are far more important locations which are representative of the commission and its works.

It is true that President Barroso and his fellow commissioners are based in the hideous and labyrinthine Berlaymont building on Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat in Brussels. So I could have entitled the column as "The Buzz from the Berlaymont" or perhaps "The View from Law Street". However, I'm bored with references to the commission HQ and its iniquitous history.

Some readers will remember that in 1991 the commission decided to give the Belaymont a make-over, premised on the need to get rid of the asbestos. The original budget was 66 million. In the end they spent over 1 billion, which makes the Scottish Parliament building look cheap. I have, in my time, wandered the corridors of the Berlaymont, enjoying inconclusive meetings with commissioners or their imperious chefs de cabinet. I have an abiding memory of one particularly obtuse talk with Karel Van Miert, the then Belgian (transport) commissioner. As he waffled on, all I could think about were his fluorescent, lime-green socks.

Then there was the overwrought Danish bureaucrat in charge of Social Fund payments to Scotland who stopped me the second I got a foot over the door of his cubbyhole. From between a mound of folders littering his desk he pre-empted me by declaring: "I don't know what you're here for – Scotland already gets enough money."

Another building I heartily dislike is the former seat of the European Parliament on its peripatetic visits to Strasbourg, the grandiosely entitled Palace of Europe. The debating chamber – called the Hemicycle – is intimidating and horribly lit, like a Dr Who set for the Galactic Council. For a time, the MEPs shared the Hemicycle with the Congress of the Council of Europe, but enlargement has meant they have moved to an even bigger folly called the Louise Weiss building. The tower of this facility is deliberately "unfinished", suggesting that constructing the European Union is an ongoing affair. Wags have made pointed references to the Tower of Babel.

There has been such a plethora of new building for the various bits of the EU apparatus, and such an orgy of renaming of old buildings, that I felt most traditional reference points for a column title had gone up in architectural smoke. For instance, the entire European Parliament in Brussels used to be housed in the Belliard, now rechristened the Delors building. The Belliard had wonderful little coffee bars scattered throughout the floors where MEPS and officials could meet serendipitously. I fed this into the consultation on the design for the Scottish Parliament building and I like to think the coffee bar in the Garden Lobby was the result.

In the end, when deciding on this column's title, I plumped for Avenue de Beaulieu – which contains numerous commission offices. It means "beautiful place" in French. I think Europe is a beautiful place and I'm proud to be a European. I also adore Brussels and its food, though it shares with Glasgow an invasion of planning mice who have eaten huge holes in the handsome traditional streetscape and filled them with substandard modern architecture that is woefully out of place. But I have learned my lesson – puns are dangerous things!