The week in brief: 1 June

Skype has been served a subpoena to appear in court in Mechelen, after the online telephone service, owned by Microsoft, refused to allow detectives access to conversations between criminal suspects  of an Armenian syndicate. The suspects were thought to be using Skype to arrange the delivery of stolen goods, and an investigating magistrate issued a warrant for the connection to be tapped. Skype refused, arguing it is not a local telecommunications provider and does not fall under Belgian law.

The Queen Elisabeth Competition, this year for violinists, has been won by 21-year-old Lim Ji Young from South Korea, who received a cheque for €25,000 and the loan of a Stradivarius violin. The two Belgian contestants in the competition, Fien Van den Fonteyne from East Flanders and Hrachya Avanesyan from Brussels, were eliminated in the first round.

The Belgian website Foodwe.be has won a European prize for the reduction of waste by NGOs. The website, launched in September, allows businesses to donate unsold but still edible foodstuffs to food banks. It has since handled 20 tonnes of food that would otherwise have been binned. Some 12,000 projects competed for the prize.

Uplace, the planned new shopping centre in Machelen, will attract more shoppers to the Brussels area, with positive effects for retail businesses in surrounding towns, according to a study commissioned by Uplace. The study contradicts claims by city councils, including in Vilvoorde and Leuven, that argue the shopping centre will drain custom away from local centres, as well as cause traffic chaos. Thanks to population growth, the study says, there will be enough of a market for everything.

The government of Flanders has awarded a diploma of additional protection to the Plantin-Moretus printing museum in Antwerp, with the backing of Unesco. The status was introduced in 2013, in the wake of incidents where radical forces in Afghanistan and Syria destroyed artefacts and monuments. Although the Plantin-Moretus museum is in no such danger, Bourgeois explained, the award “demonstrates the unique and indispensable character of this heritage site, both on a Flemish level and worldwide.” The only other site under special protection in Belgium is the Horta House in Brussels.

The Belgian intelligence services have started an enquiry into claims that the German secret service BND tapped a number of internet connections in Europe, including 15 in Belgium, over a period of years to intercept online communications. The affair is already being investigated by the Belgian telecommunications regulator BIPT and by Proximus internally.

The latest Flemish BOB campaign against drink-driving will start on 5 June. Mobility minister Ben Weyts launched the new campaign at the weekend, together with representatives of the Belgian Brewers Federation, the Road Safety Institute and the insurance federation Assuralia. Road safety campaigns are now a regional responsibility, and there was some question earlier in the year as to whether the BOB campaigns would continue.

Euronext, formerly the Brussels Stock Exchange, opened for trading last Monday in a new location, after vacating the Beurs building in central Brussels for the first time since it opened 142 years ago. The exchange is now located in the Markies building close to the Brussels cathedral, while the Beurs is transformed into a beer museum. The building had long ceased to be the centre of trading, after automation in the 1990s and a merger with the exchanges of Amsterdam, Paris and Lisbon in 2000.

Road haulage companies have threatened action in protest at the introduction of a toll for lorries using Flanders’ roads from April next year. The Dutch government has also expressed opposition to the toll, with the infrastructure minister calling it “unfair” that Belgian truckers will be compensated by a reduction in road tax to the disadvantage of trucking companies from neighbouring countries crossing Flanders. The toll is also in breach of EU rules, she said: Road tolls are allowed, but they may not discriminate.

Prime minister Charles Michel and justice minister Koen Geens were among 500 people who last week took part in a ceremony to mark the first anniversary of the attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, in which four people were killed. “We shall never reduce the risk to zero, but we can take measures to improve security, and that is what we have started in the past year,” Michel said.

The Gezinsbond (Family Union) is looking for volunteers to act as “mystery shoppers” in toy stores in Flanders to look for signs of sexism, such as dolls advertised for girls or trucks for boys. “Small businesses are doing a good job,” a spokesperson said. “The larger chains, though, sometimes go seriously over the line. We think it’s a shame that toy manufacturers and retailers reinforce the clichés of what boys and girls are supposed to like.”