Brussels Mayor Philippe Close rejected a proposal for soldiers to be deployed in the city’s neighborhoods to help police fight drug-related crime.

“In Brussels neighborhoods, soldiers are not useful, because police officers have more authority there,” he said during a Monday session of the city council.

Drugs and gang warfare are surging in the EU capital, with some 57 shootings between January and mid-August 2025 and over 7,000 individuals arraigned — almost triple that of 2024. Over the weekend, Belgian Security and Home Affairs Minister Bernard Quintin, himself a Brussels local, suggested the military should be deployed to bring the situation under control.

This was shot down by Close, who argued that military personnel would be better deployed at the Port of Antwerp or in prisons, rather than participating in joint patrols with the Brussels police.

“Almost all cocaine that enters Europe passes through Antwerp,” he added, flagging the drug trafficking in a city known as Europe’s cocaine capital.

Soldiers might even be useful in Haren prison in northern Brussels, Close suggested, which has recently made headlines due to corruption among its guards.

Quintin’s proposal was backed by his conservative-liberal Reformist Movement and the conservative New Flemish Alliance, but is opposed by Close’s Socialist Party, the Greens and the liberal VLD party. 

The ACMP military union also disapproves of the plan, saying soldiers have no legal basis to patrol Belgian streets. A union spokesperson told the BRUZZ news site that, as soldiers were only legally allowed to defend themselves in civilian settings in Belgium, all they could do was “form a shield” for police officers. 

Defense Minister Theo Francken supports the deployment idea, saying in a post on X that “a clear legal framework with clear powers and rules of engagement is ready.” He added that “Brussels is a disaster in terms of security. We need to take back control.”

Former army general Marc Thys fears soldiers could be “tested” by drug criminals, which could lead to further shootings with civilian casualties, he warned during the De Afspraak talk show on VRT.

Thys also said the current situation could not be compared with the deployment of soldiers 10 years ago, when Belgium stationed the military in public spaces in response to a terrorist attack by Islamists against Charlie Hebdo in Paris. That operation ended in 2021.