Closing a miniature amulet is a blow to Brussels, which likes to be the capital of Europe
Last modified: Friday, September 25, 2020 CEST 17. 52
When it opened in Brussels 31 years ago, many said that a tourist charm about European integration would never work. Now Mini-Europe, a collection of miniature monuments and the world’s only theme park committed to the European Union, has finished its doors. .
Earlier this month, owner and director Thierry Meeùs announced that he had failed to reach an agreement with the owners of the Brussels Expo, despite a promising “big investment”. In a statement last week, he said that the Covid-19 crisis had “spared no one”, leaving him unselected yet to close on December 31, 2020.
Since then, Belgian media reported that the park, which includes the Eiffel Tower, Vesuvius and the Acropolis modeled accurately, could leave Brussels. The nearby towns of Louvain-La-Neuve and Waterloo were promoted as opportunities. respond to the Guardian’s messages about his plans.
However, closure is a blow to Brussels, which likes to be the capital of Europe. Opened in 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall and European leaders debated a single currency, mini European champions “maxi” Europe. The park presents a mock-up of the European Commission’s star-shaped headquarters in Berlaymont, with a small edition of the European anthem Ode to The Joy of Beethoven at the touch of a button.
The consultant can be read as an EU policy paper, which blames, for example, the “low percentage of GDP” true to studies in Europe, a fear not unusual for Brussels officials. Elsewhere, it attributes the euro crisis to “a lack of Europe and European politics. “Meanwhile, many curators and MEPs have travelled the miniature continent, which is in the shadow of the Atomium, the futuristic design built in 1958.
And in Mini-Europe, there is no intermediate membership: there is no position for Norway or Switzerland, members of the European Free Trade Association, no room for hopes from the EU, Northern Macedonia or Albania. Mees told the Guardian in 2016 that he had already turned down an offer from Turkey, an EU candidate country, to enter the park.
After the expansion of the Big Bang in 2004, when 10 Central and Eastern European countries, most of them, joined the EU, Mini-Europe also developed, but the structure of the new miniatures took so long that diplomats from at least one Member State shaped an informal organisation in the lobby because of its position in the park.
But the park has made a partial exception for the UK. Before the coronavirus, Brexit was arguably the biggest crisis in the history of mini-Europe. While He once said that a permit vote would mean that the UK would have to leave the park, he has since discovered a compromise: a customs border. The British section, which includes the Houses of Parliament, Anne Hathaway’s space and the British train of the 1980s, has been closed to the EU. So far, the white cliffs of Mini-Europe in Dover but surrounded by trucks that line up, however, protesters for and against Brexit continue to demonstrate near the big ben siege, which was renewed with a charge of 120,000 euros in a time before the Brexit vote.
The park states that it is “under the patronage of the European Union”, the European Commission is distanced. “Mini-Europe has not gained investment from the EU, at least from the European Commission,” said a spokesman, who added that the European Parliament had invested in a singles exhibition in the 2019 elections.
While it is not difficult to locate some sneaky critics who denounce the park as a trap for over-priced tourists, there is also a lot of affection, as expected among EU officials. One regrets to hear its closure in Brussels. ” We enjoyed it,” said the official who estimated that his family circle had made up to 10 visits in 15 years. “We went more than once with the children, we took all our visitors from [our country of residence].
“Sometimes, on cloudy days, it’s a little sloppy, but there was something fun and fun,” the user said. “Disneyland would be brilliant with animators [characters] on each and every corner,” the user added. However, Mini-Europe was “very charming” and “was fantastic, it was there”.