According to BBC, it differs from an ordinary diplomatic mission in that it represents not a state or even a government in exile, but simply people united by a common fate. These are illegal immigrants. They have neither citizenship, nor home, nor homeland. Here they are called "sans papiers" - without documents.
The ghost embassy is located at number 66 Franklin Roosevelt Avenue. To its right is the embassy of the Republic of San Marino, to the left is Guinea-Bissau, opposite is Saudi Arabia. Its inhabitants came to Belgium from different corners of the world - Iran, Afghanistan, Ecuador, Kosovo, Ukraine, Morocco, Russia, Algeria. In total about fifty people. They live as a commune. They hold open days and national cuisine festivals. They pay regularly for water and electricity, observe the hygienic norms of communal living. In general, formally you can't find fault.
Outsiders are surprised. How is this so? In the most bourgeois part of Brussels live modern Gavroches and Cosettes, and the authorities do nothing? They don't evict, arrest, or deport? It turns out that diplomatic immunity extends to this strange embassy?
That is not entirely true. There have been arrests and police raids. Last winter, during an open house, plainclothes officers from a special police unit arrived at the embassy. They searched the premises and escorted every single inhabitant to the station to establish identities. And they photographed each of the journalists and sympathizers present - mostly from the liberal intelligentsia. Just in case, for their files.
Activists and friends of the "universal embassy" have taken this experience into account and now ask the media not to mention their names. Just in case. Although they continue to help their charges. They have obtained health insurance for every inhabitant of house number 66 and help them deal with the authorities. The support group includes lawyers and translators. They work on a voluntary basis. Almost the entire adult population of the house is employed, though also illegally, so no one pays taxes to the Belgian treasury.
The arrest incident has taken an unexpected turn. As a result of a parliamentary inquiry, an investigation is underway into the detention of the commune members. It has already been established that the police acted illegally, without proper warrants for arrest and search. And the internal affairs bodies will soon have to explain their actions in court.
The "sans papiers" movement in Belgium has had its ups and downs. In 1998, at Zaventem airport, 20-year-old Nigerian Semira Adamu died from injuries sustained during a forced deportation. That event caused a wide resonance, and a mass protest of illegal immigrants against the government's harsh prohibitive measures led to the seizure of a Protestant church in the center of Brussels.
Under public pressure, the authorities announced a short-term amnesty period, during which about 50,000 people were legalized. Then the gates to a bright future for "sans papiers" closed again. It was then, with the help of Belgian friends, that they found the empty embassy building. Someone came up with the idea of calling it the "universal embassy" - for orphaned former citizens, from whom their own homeland had turned away for various reasons, and a new one had never been found.
What awaits them in the future? Both in Belgium and other EU countries, they are trying to resolve a dilemma: on the one hand, a rapidly aging Europe needs a powerful influx of labor resources; on the other hand, this thesis finds no understanding among the native population, and the mass influx of immigrants leads to the growth of extremism.
Currently, about 15,000 applications from "sans papiers" are under consideration in the competent Belgian authorities. Most of them face refusal of residence permits, placement in closed camps, and subsequent deportation to their homeland.
Will prosperous Europe thus be saved from the invasion of new immigrants? My Flemish interlocutor from the support group of the "universal embassy" - let's call him Bart conditionally - doubts this. He has just arrived from Kinshasa. "There, a multi-million queue of people wanting to leave their homeland forever and move to Europe stands," says Bart.