(AFP) It has been five years since Islamist bombers slaughtered 32 people in the Belgian capital Brussels, in an attack then-prime minister Charles Michel says changed the country forever.
In an AFP interview, Michel — now the president of the European Council and host of EU summits in the city — said he was still marked by the events of March 22, a “terrible shock” that had a lasting impact.
“The country is not the same after those attacks. A threat that until then we’d thought of as theoretical is now very real,” said Michel, a liberal leader who was Belgium’s prime minister between 2014 and 2019.
