Brussels, 30/08/2004 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission's return to its historical Berlaymont building, in Brussels, will start in the next few days, and will theoretically take until November. The future president of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, confirmed his intentions of moving straight into the Berlaymont with his 24 Commissioners this summer.
Some 2,000 staff members, of the 18,000-19,000 Commission employees, will return to the building which had to be evacuated in 1991 due to the presence of asbestos. These will be the College of the Commissioners and services directly related to the Commission presidency: the Secretariat General, the legal services, the protocol, "GOPA" (formerly the forward studies unit, now the Group of Policy Advisors), and the spokesperson service.
Removing the asbestos and renovating the building cost the Belgian State 460 million EUR. The European Commission is to buy the building and adjoining land from the Belgian State for 55 million EUR, in the form of 27 yearly payments to start in 2005. However, it will deduct costs for the delay from this sum: in October 2002, the Commission and Belgium signed an agreement that the building would be handed over on 31 March 2004. As of this date, monthly penalties are 221,000 EUR, doubling as of July 2004. The building was originally due to be ready in 1998.
According to Belgian senator Alain Destexhe, who is campaigning for an inquiry to be opened into the works, the renovation of the Berlaymont, the payment of rent for the building where European staff have been re-housed and fines have cost Belgian and European taxpayers 1.5 billion EUR.
The renovation work has completely changed the exterior of the building, which was built in 1967 by the architects de Vestel, Gilson and Polak. The outside of the current building, which was designed by Pierre Lallemand and Steven Beckers, has been covered with a curtain wall made up of glass panes with computer-controlled rotations to adapt to climate conditions. In theory, this will reduce the Commission's energy consumption.
In all, the building's 16 floors can accommodate 2,700 people and 1,156 cars. It will include 33 meeting rooms and 70 interpretation booths, the Berlaymont 200 company, which is managing the renovation, has announced.
It is worth noting that Brussels was not officially recognised as the European capital until 1992, at the Edinburgh European Council, and only became the permanent seat of the institutions under the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997.