Summary The tunnels provide vital arteries across what is often described as Europe's most traffic-congested
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - As if the European Union does not have crises enough, now traffic chaos in its congested capital Brussels is being blamed on... hungry mice.
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.
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.
