Brussels

Paradigm runs most of the Region’s public digital services. It was founded in 1987 as CIRB, the Region’s IT centre, and took its new name in February 2023. Besides IRISbox it runs MyPermit, for planning applications, 90% of which were filed digitally in 2025. It has also faced a governance case. Both former directors faced disciplinary procedures, and the Brussels prosecutor opened an investigation in December 2024. A report by the Court of Audit, the body that audits public accounts, confirmed accounting errors and weak internal control. Consultants were cut from 192 in 2023 to 76 in 2025.

Innoviris, the regional research and innovation agency, saw its budget cut by a fifth, from €39m in 2025 to €30m in 2026. It is financing no new projects this year and has suspended its calls until 2027; hundreds of researchers signed open letters in protest. Innoviris also coordinates the Region’s place among the EU’s 100 Mission cities for climate neutrality, though the Region has not received the Mission Label that Antwerp and Leuven hold.

FARI, an institute for public-interest AI, belongs to the Dutch-speaking VUB and the French-speaking ULB universities. It received €9.91m from the EU recovery fund and began four pilots in 2022, from simpler administrative procedures to job matching; no evaluation of them has been published. Its building prototype for the Region’s digital-twin initiative was due by the end of 2024 and has published no results.

The public companies hold the networks. STIB carried 396.1 million trips in 2025, and 40 million had been paid by contactless bank card by July 2025. Sibelga, the electricity and gas grid operator, rolls out smart meters by target group rather than to every home. Participants in energy-sharing schemes rose from 454 to 1,280 in a year.

Hub.brussels, the regional enterprise agency, supported 3,100 businesses in 2025. Finance&invest.brussels, the regional development bank, took a €50m loan from the European Investment Bank in November 2025 to back about €140m of lending to small firms. BeCentral, a digital campus at Brussels-Central station, had trained or reached more than 600,000 people by 2023. Its founder, Laurent Hublet, is now the regional minister for the economy. Go Vocal, a participation platform founded in Brussels in 2015 as CitizenLab, says it serves more than 600 governments in 20 countries.

Civil society often takes its case to court. BRAL, a Dutch-speaking residents’ movement, was one of four associations that had the postponement of the clean-air zone annulled in December 2025. Lire et Écrire led the case on digital access. By July 2026 BRAL and two urban-planning associations, Inter-Environnement Bruxelles (IEB) and ARAU, had sent the Region Prémétro+, a cheaper plan built on trams, as an alternative to Metro 3.

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Cour constitutionnelle, arrêt n° 174/2025 du 11 décembre 2025 (annulation du report de la zone de basses émissions bruxelloise)

The Constitutional Court ruling that annulled the delay of the clean-air zone.

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After the regional election of 9 June 2024 it took 613 days to agree a government. Meanwhile the outgoing ministers handled current affairs, and from January 2025 the Region ran on provisional twelfths: each month it could spend a twelfth of the previous year’s outlay, plus indexation. In June 2025 the rating agency S&P downgraded the Region from A+ to A, citing the absence of a government. The seven-party Dilliès government was agreed on 12 February 2026 and sworn in two days later.

From the French-speaking side come the liberal MR, the Socialist PS and the centrist Les Engagés; from the Dutch-speaking side, Groen (Greens), Anders (liberals, formerly Open Vld), Vooruit (social democrats) and CD&V (Christian democrats). Boris Dilliès of the MR, formerly mayor of the southern municipality of Uccle, is Minister-President, the head of the regional government. Digitalisation sits with the budget minister, Dirk De Smedt of Anders. The Region has no chief digital officer, and its digital-strategy page publishes no targets or budget.

Money limits every plan. The 2026 budget, approved on 5 March, runs a deficit of €957m and aims for balance by 2029, with €1.2bn of structural savings. The Court of Audit put the Region’s gross consolidated debt at €14bn in 2024. EU money fills some gaps. The recovery fund gave €341m for 23 projects, including FARI and Floya. The regional development fund gives €121.3m for 2021–2027, and nine of the 24 projects chosen in May 2024 are digital.

Judges have shaped the rules as much as ministers. In October 2024 the MR, PS and Les Engagés led a vote to delay the clean-air zone’s 2025 stage by two years, a stage affecting about 35,000 Brussels cars. They confirmed it in March 2025 by 67 votes to 14, calling the transition socially fair and economically balanced; Ecolo (French-speaking Greens) and DéFI (French-speaking liberals) voted against. In December 2025 the Constitutional Court annulled the delay as a breach of the right to health. In September 2025 it had rejected a challenge to Bruxelles numérique, but held that the ordinance guarantees a counter, a telephone line and post.

Security and data are moving up the agenda. The federal government has approved merging the Region’s six police zones into one by 2027, against the opposition of all 19 mayors. By the MR’s own summary, the agreement centralises cameras with the federal police and adds “smart” cameras against fly-tipping.

Mobility divides the coalition most openly. The MR’s summary says the agreement explicitly abandons the logic of Good Move, the regional mobility plan, and the LEZ is to be “socially adapted”. Elke Van den Brandt of Groen, mobility minister before and again now, keeps the plan in amended form; the Brussels Times reports it will be renamed.

Opposition is local and organised. In Anderlecht, a municipality in the west of the Region, a 7,000-signature petition preceded the council’s decision in December 2025 to suspend the third phase of its own traffic plan in Cureghem.

The Low Emission Zone has covered the whole Region since 2018 and is run by Bruxelles Environnement. Its 2023 assessment found that diesel’s share of cars fell from 62.4% to 25.8%. Fleet renewal cut nitrogen oxides by 36% and black carbon by 65%. Modelling put the fall in nitrogen dioxide at about 30% on the busiest roads. Only 19% of fines were paid for vehicles registered in Brussels. Since the court ruling the delayed stage applies, softened: from April 2026 a €350 fine at most once a year per vehicle, with a new framework planned for January 2027.

From our library

Low Emission Zone Assessment 2023 Report

Bruxelles Environnement’s own assessment of the clean-air zone: fleet, pollutants and fines.

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Good Move, the regional mobility plan for 2020 to 2030, routes through-traffic round residential areas. In the Pentagone, the City of Brussels’ historic centre, car traffic fell 27% after one year and peak-hour cyclists rose 36%, while cycling was growing across the Region. The City reported 21% fewer accidents in 2023; Fabian Maingain of DéFI called its figures selective. In a 2024 survey for Brussels Mobility, 60% of about 1,900 drivers at least partly agreed with cutting through-traffic.

The City of Brussels’ central pedestrian zone, closed to cars in 2015, counted 29,100 passages a day in 2024. It cost €27.8m against €20m budgeted, and critics say it serves visitors more than residents.

Metro 3, a 10.3 km line planned from Albert in the south to Bordet in the north, is the costliest stall. In a report adopted on 8 October 2025, the Court of Audit put its estimated cost at €4.76bn in December 2024, against €1.34bn in 2015, with the full line no earlier than 2035. It found two of three worksites halted for more than 26 months and procurement law not systematically respected. The prosecutor opened an investigation that month. In July 2026 a special committee of parliament advised finishing the tunnel between Anneessens and Gare du Midi for trams and re-evaluating the northern section. A study in the journal Brussels Studies found the full line would add transfers, the shortened Albert–Nord version would lengthen average journeys, and Prémétro+ would cut both.

From our library

Le projet Métro 3 en Région de Bruxelles-Capitale (Cour des comptes, rapport adopté le 8 octobre 2025)

The Court of Audit’s report on Metro 3: cost up 255% since 2015, the full line no earlier than 2035.

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Floya, STIB’s app for planning and paying for trips across operators, was built by the software company Trafi and launched in September 2023 with EU recovery money. It was downloaded 433,416 times, but its monthly users were a small fraction of the 350,000 on STIB’s own app, and about half its transactions were e-scooter rides. STIB plans to close it on 31 December 2026, after spending about €8.5m, as the Region bans shared e-scooters from January 2027.

FixMyStreet Brussels, run by Paradigm for the Region and the 19 municipalities since 2013, logged 150,045 reports in 2023, and about 130,000 problems were resolved. A study by VUB researchers, funded by Innoviris, found reports uneven across neighbourhoods. It also warned that the app raises expectations the services cannot meet and risks residents policing one another.

Renolution, the regional renovation programme, awarded €279m in premiums on 33,126 files for works carried out from 2022 to 2024, 79% of it for energy work. IBSA, the regional statistics institute, found that owner-occupiers, houses and the wealthier south-east used them most. The Region suspended new premiums in August 2024 because demand had exhausted the budget. Public charging for electric cars has grown under concessions such as ENGIE Vianeo’s, awarded in March 2026 for 1,640 on-street points: 10,877 points on 1 October 2026, against 22,000 targeted by 2035.

The clean-air zone survived because a law and a court held it. When Parliament voted to delay its next stage, the Constitutional Court annulled the delay as a step back on the right to health. The renovation premiums depended on money. Demand exhausted them in August 2024, and from January 2025 the Region could spend each month only a twelfth of the previous year’s outlay. The Dilliès government’s first budget has since added stops of its own: Innoviris’s 2026 calls, the northern metro and, on 31 December, Floya.