British residents in Brussels rush to apply for Belgian nationality: report

Within hours of the UK voting to leave the EU, the mayors of several towns around Brussels reported a surge in British residents asking how to apply for Belgian nationality, Le Soir newspaper reported on Saturday.

In Waterloo, a suburb to the south of the Belgian capital with 450 registered Britons, mayor Florence Reuter told Le Soir that five people had submitted the paperwork to begin the procedure on Friday morning.

She said dozens of others had called in to ask for information.

"The registry office has dealt with nothing else this morning," she added.

The Brussels district of Woluwe-Saint-Pierre received three submissions on Friday, Le Soir added, having received none at all from British residents in the past four months.

In another part of the city, Ixelles, 15 Britons sought information on becoming Belgian by lunchtime on Friday.

Olivier Deleuze, mayor of the Brussels district of Watermael-Boitsfort, said he had three Britons on Friday morning asking to begin the procedure to become Belgian.

"It's exceptional," he told Le Soir. "Normally we never get this sort of request. We had one in 2013 and one back in March."

According to the British Embassy in Brussels, there are about 31,000 British citizens living in Belgium. About 1,500 Britons work for the European institutions. Endit