The Brussels Minister-President Rudi Vervoort will meet the 19 Brussels mayors to discuss the Region's curfew on Wednesday, he said in a committee of the Brussels Parliament on Tuesday.
The exchanges in the parliament showed that nobody is happy about maintaining Brussels' 10:00 PM curfew, including Vervoort himself, reports the Belga news agency.
While many want the curfew to be lifted, or at least aligned with the Flemish and Walloon one (from midnight to 5:00 AM, instead of between 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM), no clear outcome emerged from the discussions on Tuesday.
Vervoort justified his decision not to change anything for the moment and stick to the status quo decided in the Consultative Committee of 26 February, by referring to the uncertainty about the more infectious coronavirus variants.
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Additionally, he stated that 14 European countries are currently applying a curfew, some of them over a longer period of time than in Brussels, and with less bad epidemiological figures.
According to Vervoort, all the elements of the system are interconnected, making it difficult to measure the quantified impact of just one of them.
The main issues of maintaining the curfew had already been addressed in the Regional government, where Vervoort received a clear mandate, he stated. "I discuss it with everyone, including virologists," he said.
Vervoort also stressed that the continued curfew was linked to the Consultative Committee's decision to take a "time-out" week on 26 February, and not change any of the measures.
Following that Committee, several mayors in Brussels criticised Vervoort for not meeting with them about the extension of the measure, even though such a meeting had been announced.
"All I did was to implement the decisions legally. The issue of the curfew was not even addressed there," he said on Tuesday. "The figures are not extraordinary. I also know that some mayors want to maintain the measure."
All measures are taken in the general interest of the health of the citizens, Vervoort stressed.
Maïthé Chini
The Brussels Times
