Ian Buruma in NYRB on Brussels, the EU and Belgium (very much worth reading):

'Still, much of the negative reputation of Brussels is undeserved and overblown. Brussels is not a dangerous city—not even Molenbeek, which is shabby, sullen (unemployment 30 percent), socially cut off, but not especially menacing. Many non-Muslim hipsters live there as well. Parts of Brussels are actually quite beautiful. The city has many fine examples of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, as well as the more famous sixteenth- and seventeenth-century gold-gabled buildings on the magnificent Grand Place.

But Brussels is indeed rather chaotic, a political mess of nineteen different municipal districts, each with its own public authorities competing for funds, with an uncoordinated police force prone to conspicuous failures, and different political parties, linked to different language groups, operating their own more or less corrupt systems of patronage. Brussels, which has its own government, is mostly Francophone, but it is also the capital of Dutch-speaking Flanders and the capital of the European Union, whose own “Quartier Européen” is almost like a separate city within the city.'

(...)

'This peculiarly open-ended status can be disconcerting. And the lack of central coordination and control, on a municipal, national, and European level, may account for a sense of drift, unaccountability, and disorder. Perhaps the disaffection and extremism in Molenbeek are partly the result of this, as is the seeming paralysis of the EU in the face of financial crises and migrants streaming across Europe’s porous borders. The problems of Belgium and the EU overlap. But if Brussels is the symbol of dysfunction, its lack of a clear identity, its fragmentation, and its flexibility also offer a sense of freedom and possibility. The EU, and perhaps Belgium too, are still experiments, and that might be their greatest strength.'

Read the article here.

Buruma is right, the capital of Belgium deserves an "In praise of Brussels" and the fact that Belgium despite everything still exists may be a sign that there is hope for the EU.
The masses never liked cosmopolitanism, but it needs to be defended -- for exactly the same reasons why Buruma speaks highly about Brussels.