A league table drawn up by the European Union’s statistics agency Eurostat shows that 3.09 murders occur in Brussels for every 100,000 inhabitants, making it the 5th most dangerous capital city in Europe.
Top of the ‘murder league’ is Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania which boasts 7.9 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. Tallinn in Estonia follows in second place with 6.03 murders. Luxemburg City follows in third place (4.24 murders) with the Dutch commercial capital Amsterdam nipping Brussels at the post with 3.65 murders per 100,000 residents per year.
Valetta in the island state of Malta is the safest EU capital. Not a single murder occurred there during the given period.
For Belgium as a whole there are 1.87 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. The EU claims that criminality in Belgium rose by 3% between 2007 and 2009
