The City of Brussels owns a dune in Middelkerke, which it has agreed to sell to Flanders for €61,000. The 9,000 square-metre plot of land looking out to the North Sea, must have originally been left to the city as a donation or legacy, said Mohamed Ouriaghli, the Brussels city councillor in charge of public properties.
According to Ouriaghli, the Flemish region's offer to buy the land was accepted "without hesitation" as it has no use to the City of Brussels and cannot be developed.
"We do not have many properties outside the city. This dune was one of the exceptions," he said. The sale will be rubber-stamped by the city council today.
Flanders wants the land back as part of a joint Franco-Flemish project to buy up privately owned parcels of land along the dunes from Dunkirk to Middelkerke to protect local flora and fauna. The dunes are part of the EU's Natura 2000 network of breeding and resting sites for rare and threatened species.