The offices of the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU’s diplomatic arm, were evacuated after a fire in Brussels on Thursday evening.
According to an eyewitness, an evacuation started when smoke was seen in an upper corridor by several people. The fire alarm had been tested that same morning, the first Thursday of each month.
The building is on the Schuman roundabout in the heart of the Belgian capital’s European Quarter.
Other eyewitnesses described several firefighting crews rushing to the scene. Due to the late hour, the building was already largely empty.
The EU’s lead foreign affairs spokesperson confirmed late on Thursday that “there was an incident at the European External Action Service Headquarters earlier today, involving smoke.”
“All staff were evacuated as a precautionary measure, and emergency services responded promptly. No staff were hurt.”
The spokesperson added they were working with authorities to establish the cause of the fire, and that “most EEAS operations have resumed.”
The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, who has an office on the building’s upper floors, was not present at the time of the fire – she travelled on Thursday to the Polish city of Gdańsk with her fellow members of the European Commission.
An EU ambassadors’ conference, in which the EEAS hosted all of the bloc’s more than 140 heads of delegations, took place earlier this week in Brussels.
[OM]