Pascal Smet apologized for comparing Brussels to a whore while detailing his "One Brussels" city plan | Laurie Dieffembacq/AFP via Getty Images EU CONFIDENTIAL Brussels is like ‘a whore,’ says minister Pascal Smet wants to reform the city’s wasteful, bureaucratic structures.

Charles Michel, Belgium's prime minister, on Friday attacked Pascal Smet, a Flemish social democratic rival, for comparing the city of Brussels to "a whore."

Michel said the city of Brussels and its people "deserve more respect."

Smet, the mobility and public works minister of the Brussels region, told POLITICO's EU Confidential podcast: "I compare Brussels very often with a whore, with a prostitute. Because at the same time it's beautiful, it's very horny, but at the same time it's very ugly. It's attractive and at the same time unattractive. It's nice in its ugliness and ugly in its niceness.”

Smet later apologized for his comments, made while outlining a "One Brussels" plan to unify governance across the city's fragmented local and regional governments, which he says will save taxpayers €1 billion and abolish 800 political posts.

The Battle for Brussels

According to Smet, transforming Brussels is a generational problem. The current leadership are “dinosaurs” and act like a “junta,” he said.

The so-called dinosaurs are not going quietly, however.

Laurette Onkelinx, head of the French-speaking Socialist Party in Brussels, said within two hours of the plan going public: "It's rubbish!"

Smet's boss Rudi Vervoor, minister-president of the Brussels Region, tweeted "Get to work instead of testing phantom solutions for our region."

There was also criticism from Didier Reynders, the country's deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister, who said Smet's "misogyny" was "inadmissible."

Les propos #misogynes de Pascal Smet sont inadmissibles. — didier reynders (@dreynders) December 15, 2017

Smet sees his allies as young voters and people working in and around the European Union, to whom he wants to deliver additional voting rights, and said that government services should be available in English.

According to the plans, Brussels' 19 municipalities would merge into a Brussels regional government, leaving one executive for the city. It would also have one budget and one set of social services instead of 19 and, controversially, one police force instead of six.

In his apology Smet changed his analogy to: "Brussels is a dual city. It pulls in and pushes away."

Smet's reform plan had already attracted considerable backlash from local power brokers worried about political incursions into their territory.

Brussels governments have faced a wave of corruption scandals this year, and there was a deluge of negative international publicity in 2016 about how Brussels and Belgium try to prevent terrorism.

"Everybody is competent for something but nobody is responsible," Smet said. "They are just simply too many politicians who can't get votes by saying no" to plans for urban improvements like bicycle lanes and pedestrian areas in Brussels city center.

Smet's plans also include doing away with the many intermediary organizations that run parts of Brussels' public services, known as intercommunales — structures that just months ago caused a political crisis in the French-speaking Socialist Party that led to the party being kicked out of the regional government in the southern part of the country, Wallonia.

More solidarity between rich and poor, a simpler and more efficient city management and an end to Brussels' political absurdities. Here’s my plan for a new Brussels: less politicians, more participation and the right for EU nationals to vote. One city, #OneBrussels ! pic.twitter.com/Zv4I0NOPiJ — Pascal Smet (@SmetPascal) December 15, 2017

https://twitter.com/JoVanobost/status/941648723419062273

Last summer, Brussels Mayor Ivan Mayeur had to step down over a scandal involving an intercommunale. Mayeur, who is from the French-speaking Socialist Party and had been mayor since 2013, lost the support of political allies after he failed to justify payments of up to €1,400 per month for attending board meetings of Samusocial, which provides shelter for homeless people and largely relies on volunteers.

If he can beat back complaints about his vision and rhetoric, Smet says reform will have to come one step at a time. "I would like to have a big shock," he said. "But unfortunately in bustling democracies it doesn't work like that. So it has to be bottom up."