|
 EU leaders gathering for a summit on Thursday to deal with the
refugee crisis and British threats to quit the bloc find a city
struggling to cope with repeated closures of key road tunnels caused
by crumbling concrete and years of decay.
Now the Belgian capital's regional parliament has been told that
repairs are being held up because original construction plans have
been destroyed -- apparently eaten by rodents.
The tunnels provide vital arteries across what is often described as
Europe's most traffic-congested city. But for decades the plans for
their construction were stored in the pillars under a motorway
bridge, for want of space elsewhere.
 "They may have been eaten by mice," the former head of the city's
infrastructure agency told city lawmakers on Wednesday.
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The state of the roads in the city of 1.2 million, home to the
European Union and NATO headquarters, has become a hot political
issue in Belgium, with an estimated bill of some 1 billion euros
($1.1 billion) to repair all the tunnels.
(Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; editing by Philip Blenkinsop and
Katharine Houreld)
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