Once was anticipatable; twice: remarkable; but for the European Parliament building in Brussels to be robbed at gun point three times in the space of just two years is down-right astonishing and raises huge question marks over the security arrangements in place.

On Friday, two men with a gun robbed the Parliament's post office and escaped with an unknown sum of money in its safe. The post office branch, located on the lower ground floor of the ASP Spinelli building, is located almost immediate opposite one of the main visitor entrances (as illustrated above left) and remarkably within yards of the complex’s main security desk.

British Liberal Democrat MEP Fiona Hall was one of the first on the scene afterwards as she innocently attempted to buy stamps and was confronted by two female staff members who had been held up at gunpoint only minutes earlier. She said that "For an armed robbery to happen – again – inside the European parliament means that the security system here is a complete farce."

In May last year an employee of Sodexo bank was robbed while transporting money from the Parliament canteen, while in February 2009 a man with a gun robbed a branch of ING bank on the ground floor of Parliament's Paul-Henri Spaak building. He had demanded cash from a cashier and escaped with an undisclosed sum.

What is perhaps more alarming is that EU officials seem to believe it was an ‘inside job’ as there is no evidence of forced entry into the building, with one official who was anonymously quoted by the EUObserver as saying: “it could be assistants, there are dozens of companies that come in and out, journalists. Technically, it could even be MEPs."

It will undoubtedly raise further questions about the capability of the local police service to provide enough security men as it happened while all the EU leaders were gathering nearby for their regular monthly summit. Fellow EU blogger @RonPatz hit the nail on the head when he tweeted: “If I was a robber wanting to rob the EU Parliament (as happened today!) I'd also do it during an #EUCO. All police are at Schuman & can't go.”

The dilemma for the security team in Brussels thus remains how do you provide adequate security while making Parliament accessible? Thousands of officials, politicians, visitors and journalists gain access to the building every day and are required to pass through a metal detector and provide a form of official identification. It is only right that they remain able to do so as the Parliament should be accessible for all EU citizens, but why has this not prevent Parliament being held at gun point three times in 24 months?

The underline the urgent problem, the head of the Parliament's press service, Jaume Duch, is quoted by the EUObserver saying that “while this is shocking that this has happened again, we have to remember that this is a parliament, not Fort Knox, and it cannot be. It must be open to all citizens. Sometimes we have as many as 10,000 individuals in the building at a time. We can't say that, for example, a doubling of the number of security cameras would do anything at all. We have to balance security and openness."

Now that is happened for a third time, the security concerns will be taken seriously and the problem swiftly resolved before the Parliament makes headlines again as the victim of another massive compromising and embarrassing security breach.

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An extremely interesting article appeared on EUObserver a few weeks ago as a result of a fascinating insight into the communications strategy’s and beliefs of MEPs by lobby firm Fleishman-Hillard, which concluded that members of the European Parliament are on the whole afraid of using the micro-blogging utility Twitter, have ceased blogging and yet appear to favour the social networking service Facebook for communicating with their constituents.

This got me wondering how connected the six MEPs that represent the South West UK region are to these online networks and have produced the following grill, which shows that apart from Liberal Democrat Graham Watson, they are still making tentative steps establishing an active online presence.

	Website	Blog	Twitter	Facebook	YouTube
Giles CHICHESTER
Trevor COLMAN
William DARTMOUTH
Ashley FOX
Julie GIRLING
Graham WATSON

Note: All links open in a new window.

Update (18/02/2011): Julie Girling has joined Twitter via @juliegirling.

Labels: Ashley Fox, Giles Chichester, Graham Watson, Julie Girling, Trevor Colman, William Dartmouth

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