The new premises for the Council of the EU and European Council at the EUROPA building will be fully operational by January 2017. This building is the result of an architectural project involving a combination of modernity, sustainable development and historical heritage, after almost 12 years of construction work.
This glass square shaped building is located at the heart of the European quarter in Brussels. The building will contain a glass lantern and as from January future ministerial meetings will be held there. From next March, European and international summits will also take place there. The shape of the lantern was chosen on the basis of the different meeting configurations that it will be playing host to and because it was not possible to support it on the ground, due to the Schumann railway tunnel the passes close by, explained the Belgian architect, Philippe Samyn.
The building was devised to allow a maximum of external light through and it contains amazing sustainability characteristics. 636 solar panels cover the totality of the building’s roof. A rainwater collection and storage system will be used for the washrooms and lavatories. A cutting-edge mechanism will regulate lighting, humidity and temperature levels within the building. In the north and east, the external façade of the building is made up of a patchwork of 3750 recycled wooden frames from building sites from many different member states.
The construction of the whole edifice, which also consists of a part of the Residence Palace building designed in 1924 by the Swiss architect, Michel Polak, is estimated to have cost €321 million in 2016 monetary values. This budget could be further adjusted with the final project delivery and it was “almost” entirely funded out of the EU budget, according to a Council press release.
The decision to build a new headquarters for the Council of the EU and European Council was taken in 2003, just before the EU’s enlargement to Central and Eastern European countries. Member states at the time decided that all European summits should now take place in Brussels, as compensation to Belgium, which was about to lose out in the weight voting at the Council of the EU, due to enlargement.
The EUROPA building will be open to the public on Saturday 10 December. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)