Farmers in another region in Flanders have now been asked not to pump up groundwater for their crops due to low water reserves. Flanders Environment Agency (VMM) emphasises, however, that there is no shortage of drinking water. In the Zuidijzer polder area of West Flanders, which runs from the...

Supermarket chain Carrefour will open its first fully organic store in Brussels on Friday. The new outlet is located on Avenue Georges Henri in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert. While Brussels counts many organic shops, this will be just the second opened by a big chain. The first is Colruyt’s Bio-Planet in...

The Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) is adding a postgraduate study in English called School of Thinking. The one-year course is being carried out at the university’s Leo Apostel Center for transdisciplinary research. School of Thinking will focus on training students in how to approach complex...

A man in Ostend is trying to set a world record by sitting. On the toilet. Jimmy De Frenne has been sitting on a toilet in the middle of Filip’s Place café (no worries, he’s fully clothed) for two full days now. He’s planning a minimum 150-hour run, which means he can get up sometime next Saturday...

A bonus scheme in Brussels that encourages drivers to give up their car in return for free public transport attracted 860 new applicants last year. The Bruxell'Air bonus is available to any resident in the Brussels region who takes their personal car off the road and de-registers it with the...

Belgium may boast one of Europe’s best plastic recycling rates, but it’s not immune to the swathes of plastic junk swilling around our seas, killing wildlife and entering the food chain. Nor is it without blame. The country’s beaches contain a whopping 100 kilograms per kilometre of trash, about 95...

The idea of opening a shop full of beautifully designed products from Nordic countries had been percolating at the back of my mind since I arrived in Brussels 13 years ago. I felt the shopping experience in Brussels was not especially good in comparison to Copenhagen, where there’s such an abundant...

Belgium has been ordered to pay a fine of €5,000 a day for failing to implement a European directive on the rollout of high-speed internet. The European Commission began legal action against Belgium two years ago, because the 2014 EU directive had not been transposed into Belgian law. The...

It takes, on average, 10 minutes and 53 seconds for firefighters to arrive at the scene of a fire in Belgium, according to newly released figures which reveal big regional differences. The fastest fire brigade in Belgium can be found in the Zwijndrecht district of Antwerp, where a fire engine is...

A 12-car pile-up on the Brussels Ring caused major delays on Tuesday morning. The vehicles smashed into each other on the anti-clockwise carriageway, between Halle and Wauthier-Braine, at about 7.30. The left and middle lanes were blocked. Driving association Touring said there were five kilometres...