Interior minister urges firms: Do business in Belgium 'with confidence'

Federal interior minister Jan Jambon spoke to members of the British Chamber of Commerce yesterday as part of the Ambassador Hosts series of speeches in English. “Unfortunately, 2015 will be remembered in Belgium as a year of almost continuous threats of terrorism,” he said.

Jambon (pictured) recalled how the year started, with the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris and the break-up of an Islamist terror cell in Verviers in which radicalised Belgians were plotting to kill police. Then last month came the attacks in Paris, which the French government said were commanded by the Islamic State in Syria but organised in Belgium.

That last point, the accusation that Belgium’s Molenbeek neighbourhood is an incubator of radicalism, is a view Jambon believes the government should have done more to combat. “You can’t deny it, there is a link,” he acknowledged, but as for being the planning hub for Paris, “up to now, we don’t have any proof of that.”

Jambon noted that events have spurred numerous security upgrades this year, with both the Belgian government and the European Union passing new measures. He is working to see through a reorganisation of Brussels’ police zones, which will range from refocusing tasks to connecting the zones through a communications system, something that does not currently exist.

Belgium is already rolling out a passenger-name record system, and the EU is following, after years of deadlock on the matter. Jambon said that Belgium is planning to ban the use of anonymous pre-paid phone cards, as terrorists use them to avoid law-enforcement tracking.

However, his “biggest challenge,” he said, was to ensure the safety of citizens and businesses, as “confidence is needed to work, to invest and to consume”. But he said that’s increasingly a shared responsibility between governments, citizens and businesses. He asked the crowd of businesspeople and diplomats at the chamber to help send out the message that “normal life can continue in this country and in Brussels”.

Photo: Jonathan Raa/Demotix/Corbis