EU Copper Heist freezes Brussels institutions

The Pentecost weekend was filled with copper thefts, ranging from unsuccessful attempts to Guinness Book of Records achievements. The first, but unsuccessful, attempt happened during the night of Friday to Saturday on the Belgian railway line 140 ‘Charleroi-Ottignies’. But Railway Police officers caught the two thieves red-handed. A second, and more successful, attempt of a copper theft happened Saturday on the railway line between Paris and Lille, which disrupted the Eurostar and Thalys traffic for a couple of hours.

But the Guinness Book of Records achievement happened on Saturday afternoon. The copper thieves used the ‘Zinneke’ parade as a distraction. Because the parade gathered thousands of people in the centre of Brussels it kept the police department well occupied, thus creating the perfect momentum for what will be remembered for a long time as the largest European copper heist. And to make the action even more outrageous and blunt, it all happened in clear daylight. The thieves hit the nerve centre of Europe, going after the EU copper mine, the immense copper resources hidden in the communication lines of the different European institutions. This caused an unforeseeable communications outage, that only has been discovered this Tuesday morning, in the Brussels EU quarter.

At the moment unofficial sources were able to inform us that DG COMM, together with the telecom operators, is looking at the possible options to face these dramatic events hoping to restore the communication lines as soon as possible. Let’s hope the issue doesn’t require an inter-service consultation first, because this could certainly delay the repairs.

In the meantime civil servants and MEPs could in fact for once get some work done, undistracted and in a state of flow, that is except for everything that doesn’t require an internet connection (what doesn’t?!). But for the Brussels based lobbyists and public affairs consultants there rests nothing to do than declare technical unemployment for the time being. Thus prolonging their long weekend and ‘Mojito time’.

The BJ has however been told that an entrepreneurial Irish citizen based in Brussels had offered an emergency solution, consisting in a combination of cyclists carrying weighty documents that need to be shared across buildings, the lighter missives being handled by carrier pigeons. The city of Brussels is however examining if these pigeons could obtain the necessary permits to fly over the capital city in due time.