Hundreds of EU officials’ children face upheaval and uncertainty as a major campus of the European School system in Brussels prepares to move pupils to a temporary location due to chronic overcrowding and repeated delays to the construction of a new school.

Created in 1953 to educate the children of European officials, the European School system is facing severe overcrowding. The four Brussels campuses serve more than 14,600 pupils. The European School Brussels II in Woluwe — built for 2,500 children in 1974 — now hosts almost 4,000.

To solve this, the Woluwe school, also called EEB2, plans to temporarily relocate all its nursery and primary school students to a newer site in Evere, near NATO headquarters, in 2026 until the Belgian authorities build a long-promised fifth campus in Neder-Over-Heembeek, on the northern outskirts of Brussels.

But the construction of the new campus, first announced a decade ago, has been repeatedly delayed, with no clear assurances from the Belgian government on when or even if it will be built. To make matters worse, the permit for the interim campus in Evere expires in 2027.

“Parents are very worried because we just see empty promises,” said the mother of a secondary pupil in Woluwe.

POLITICO spoke to seven parents, all members of the Woluwe parents’ association APEEE. They were granted anonymity to speak freely, as several expressed concerns that publicly identifying themselves could invite negative repercussions from school authorities.

Chronic overcrowding meets delayed expansion

The European Schools network, funded mainly by the European Commission, was created to educate children of officials working for European institutions — free of charge — leading to the European Baccalaureate, a diploma granting university access across all EU member countries and several other nations.

There are 13 schools spread across the EU. Students attend classes in their mother tongue, so they can easily reintegrate into their national school systems if needed.

Brussels’ role as the EU capital drew many Eurocrats with young families. But campus capacity struggled to keep pace. “We have daily health, safety and well-being risks due to overcrowding,” Secretary-General of the European Schools Andreas Beckmann, who is the schools’ senior executive, said.

To ease the overcrowding, the organization opened a new campus in Evere in 2021, initially conceived as the site for a future fifth school. After that project was reassigned to Neder-Over-Heembeek, Evere became a temporary base for some kindergarten and primary school kids from the Woluwe school.

Meanwhile, the new fifth campus, originally due to be completed by 2028, has been pushed to 2030 and, even then, there’s no guarantee it will be built.

The responsibility for building the new school rests with the Régie des Bâtiments, Belgium’s public buildings authority. Its spokesperson, Sylvie Decraecker, said in an email that it cannot proceed without funding from the federal government, which governs how Belgium finances infrastructure for international institutions it hosts. 

Two letters seen by POLITICO — from former Prime Minister Alexander De Croo to former European Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn in June 2024, and from Belgian Ambassador to NATO François de Kerchove to the schools’ Secretary-General Beckmann in February 2025 — acknowledge parents’ worries and reaffirm Belgium’s “well-established tradition” of supporting the European Schools, but offer no guarantees of a fifth school. Parents had raised their concerns with Hahn and Beckmann, who in turn wrote to De Croo and de Kerchove.

“If we do not plan now, this is a disaster in the making for later,” said Pim Gesquiere, president of the Woluwe APEEE.

A campus on borrowed time

Adding to parents’ unease, the Evere campus’ permit expires in March 2027. Urban planning documents show a new road cutting through the school grounds as part of the PAD Défense redevelopment plan, a master plan for infrastructure and security upgrades near NATO headquarters.

However, Decraecker said that a request to extend the permit until 2037 is expected to receive final approval by the end of 2026. “This extension would require adapting the playground at the rear of the site in order to allow, when the time comes, for the creation of a new roadway serving the future neighborhood,” she said.

“Regarding the modification of road infrastructure, the school’s management has been informed of this prospect. Although this is not ideal for day-to-day operations, the management appears willing to accept this constraint,” she added.

It’s not a new predicament for the European Schools. In Frankfurt, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde recently called it “embarrassing” that local authorities still hadn’t found space for a new European School to ease overcrowding. “We can’t move from container to container to potato field,” she said.

Beckmann and EEB2 Director Kamila Malik acknowledged the structural problems, but defended the anticipated move as a short-term necessity to ease overcrowding and ensure safety. They said they hope using Evere to its full capacity will pressure Belgium to finally start building the fifth school.

Of barracks, security checks and bad air

The Evere campus is located near NATO’s former headquarters, which was repurposed in 2020 to host Belgium’s largest terrorism trials following the attacks at Zaventem Airport and Brussels’ Maelbeek metro station in March 2016.

The area retains much of its security infrastructure: fenced perimeters, surveillance systems and limited green space, with traffic regularly slowed by security checks around NATO’s current headquarters, located just across the street.

Parents argued these conditions make the site unsuitable for young children. “This is not where children should grow up, this is not a school,” said the mother of two kids who will be affected by the move.

Some parents are even considering working part-time or returning to their home countries because of the move. “We moved here because of my job, but I don’t want my kids to grow up in a site surrounded by barbed wire and in barracks,” said the mother of one primary pupil.

The campus’ high-profile neighbor is not welcome, either.

“You’re in the middle of NATO’s defense area. It’s a bit scary, especially given the current geopolitical climate,” said a mother of two students, who currently works at the European Commission. “Inside the Commission, we get all sorts of briefings about drones and defense threats. It’s not unreasonable to think it could be a target.”

It’s not just the surroundings that are less than ideal. A 2024 Brussels SIRANE air-quality study also found the Evere campus had the worst air quality of any primary school location in the region. EEB2 Director Malik countered that the school did its own testing and the results were “very, very good” and “much better than in central Brussels.” POLITICO was denied access to the full report.

Families are also struggling with logistics, with children split between Evere and Woluwe — it would take about 15 minutes by bicycle or 40 minutes by public transport to get from one to the other. Parents noted that most of them are expatriates who moved for EU jobs, leaving family support networks behind. “You are dependent on having all your kids in one location, on the bus service, on the garderie [daycare] … it is not helpful when your kids are being moved,” said one parent.

Structural problems persist

From the outside, the European Schools seem like a privileged enclave. But the system is stretched to its limits.

The schools’ complex governance structure, split between the EU and national bodies, means “everyone decides, and no one decides … everyone will always find someone else to blame,” said the mother of a student in primary and one in secondary. They also complained that decisions are made behind closed doors and without proper consultations with parents.

Beckmann rejected the accusations of not sticking to promises, explaining that the relocation clause had always been subject to review in 2024 and that decisions were made collectively.

Meanwhile, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) study conducted in five European Schools between September and November 2018 found that children with disabilities were often not provided with adequate accommodation to allow them to learn in an inclusive environment. The report did not specify which schools were reviewed.

Teachers have also raised concerns over employment conditions at the European Schools. Between February and March this year, staff in Brussels staged several strikes to demand equal rights for locally recruited teachers, who face precarious contracts, lack job stability and have no union representation.

To address job-security concerns, Beckmann said that the Board of Governors decided to provide staff that have worked in the system for more than eight years with permanent contracts. Regarding the salary concerns, he said the system is also looking into it, but argued that the European Schools in Belgium already offer “more than competitive” salaries compared with national schools.

But for many Brussels parents, it may not be enough. “The whole history of overcrowding in the European Schools is about inadequate planning,” said Gesquiere. “And the children are the ones caught in the middle.”