This decision by Elon Musk to close Twitter’s office in Brussels is surprising and somewhat risky, either by action or omission, as I explain below. And the thing is, you might have thought in the first place that this was a local authority, like many others that the social network has (well, in many cases “has”) around the world, and that the respect of Belgium does not seem to be to be a particularly large market for social networks. But of course we have to think that this city is not only the capital of Belgium.

It also shares the capital status of the European Union with Luxembourg and Strasbourg, which is why it is one of the key epicenters of the politics of the old continent, which gives it an essential strategic value. This is why many of the great technique American companies have a permanent presence there because it greatly facilitates their relations with European governing bodies, including regulators.

Either in the preparation phase of new regulations, during which they try to influence them if they affect their interests, in the application phase to facilitate their adaptation, or as a base if there is a legal conflict due to their application. offices are a kind of private diplomatic missions that look after the interests of their companies in a legal framework as complex and increasingly regulated as the European Union.

We don’t have to look far to find EU actions affecting Twitter, as new rules to combat disinformation on social media were approved last week, and the European Union says it has data showing that Twitter isn’t fighting disinformation. And yet, according to what we can read on Yahoo! Finance, Twitter’s Brussels office has been closed amid massive layoffs from the social network at a particularly difficult time.

The office, which had less than ten employees, worked precisely on both fronts, according to the publication’s sources. However, and although it is not known whether they were fired or voluntarily decided to leave Twitter after Elon Musk’s ultimatum, they left the company last week, leaving Twitter without its main managers, who were also the best experts on the European legal framework and its relationship with the social network.

In this case, again, I think it’s not responding to a strategic decision, but rather to the “elephant in china” model with which Twitter’s CEO is trying to put out the fire that is his bottom line. The problem is that, as we have already seen in the case of dismissed workers who were later asked to return to the company, this type of conduct can have a very negative impact on the company and therefore on the resolution of the dispute. the problem of red numbers.