Cristina Pagan announced her resignation at 10:17 on Friday, moments after the Brussels regional cabinet proposed delaying the award of a €38 million neighbourhood-improvement fund. Outside the government offices, residents who had spent two weeks voting on the projects erupted in cheers when officials later confirmed the money would follow their ranking.
The vote was run through Square Steps, a phone game in which residents allocated points to proposals such as shaded squares, safer crossings and rain gardens. Its unexpectedly large turnout crossed a threshold set in a 2025 regional law: once 100,000 verified residents voted, the top-ranked projects would receive the full fund.
The vote clears its threshold
The final count, published on the regional results portal on Thursday night, recorded 187,420 verified voters across Brussels’s 19 municipalities. Twelve projects won funding; the leading proposal, a network of rain gardens and tree cover along a paved corridor in Anderlecht, received 31,806 top-rank selections.
Pagan, the regional minister for civic affairs, said colleagues wanted more time to check whether the game’s scoring system matched the law. She rejected that delay at a short press conference, then resigned from her post. “I cannot ask people to trust a vote and then bargain away its result,” she said.
I cannot ask people to trust a vote and then bargain away its result.
Cristina Pagan, regional minister for civic affairs
The proposal to pause the awards had not been prompted by evidence of tampering, officials said. The law requires identity checks and one ballot per eligible resident; the regional administration reported no breach, and its published count included only verified ballots. The cabinet said it wanted legal advice on the unusual scale of participation before releasing contracts.
A promise becomes a work plan
By 16:40, the governing coalition had dropped its plan to seek a delay and confirmed that the 12 projects would proceed. Bartu Çetiner, a regional budget director, said the first procurement notices would be published by 2 November, with construction expected to begin next spring. He estimated that the winning proposals would directly improve 27 public spaces.
Residents gathered near the offices watched the announcement on phones and waved printed maps of their neighbourhood projects. “For once, the small streets were not an afterthought,” said Mandla van der Walt, who voted for a new crossing near his apartment. Ann-Sofie Ek-Norberg, a Square Steps product manager, said the game had been designed as a simple way to compare proposals, not to predict a turnout of this size.
Pagan’s departure leaves the coalition needing to appoint a replacement, but officials said that would not change the funding timetable. Brussels has used smaller local consultations before; none had triggered a legally binding award on this scale. The first sites to receive work are expected to be named next month, as residents celebrate a result that began with a game and ended with control over a major public budget.
