agreed in principle to locate the executives, councils, and the assembly in one city, though could still not decide which city, so they put the decision off for six months. In the meantime, the Assembly would stay in Strasbourg and the new commissions would meet alternatively at the ECSC seat and at the Château of Val-Duchesse, in Brussels (headquarters of a temporary committee). The Councils would meet wherever their Presidents wanted to. In practice, this was at Val-Duchesse until autumn 1958 when it moved to central Brussels, at 2, /. Installation in Brussels and early development Brussels missed out in its bid for a single seat due to a weak campaign from the Belgian Government in negotiations. The government eventually pushed its campaign and started large-scale construction, renting office space in the east of the city for use by the institutions. On 11 February 1958, the six member states' governments concluded an unofficial agreement on the setting-up of community offices. On the principle that it would take two years after a final agreement to prepare the appropriate office space, full services were set up in Brussels in expectation of a report from the Committee of Experts looking into the matter of a final seat. While waiting for the completion of the building on the /, offices moved to 51–53, Rue Belliard/Belliardstraat on 1 April 1958 (later exclusively used by the Euratom Commission), though with the numbers of European civil servants rapidly expanding, services were set up in buildings on the /, the /, the Avenue de Tervueren/Tervurenlaan, the /, the /, the Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat and the /. The Belgian Government further provided newly built offices on the Mont des Arts/Kunstberg (22, /) for the Council of Ministers' Secretariat and European Investment Bank. A Committee of Experts deemed Brussels to be the one option to have all the necessary features for a European capital: a large, active metropolis, without a congested centre or poor quality of housing; good communications with other member states' capitals, including to major commercial and maritime markets; vast internal transport links; an important international business centre; plentiful housing for European civil servants; and an open economy. Furthermore, it was located halfway between France and Germany (as in the case of other seats of European institutions), and on the border between the two major European civilisations: Latin and Germanic; and was at the centre of the