Poor Belgium. The land of frites, chocolate and surrealism has been getting flak from all quarters recently.

Libération's Jean Quatremer had a double-page spread about its urban disasters, which sent La Dernière Heure on a mission to the outre-Quiévrain* to point out that there are some unlovely corners of Paris as well. It has rained, consistently, for the entire duration of this year, meaning the press corps is even more whiny than usual about the city. And now, the European Commission has weighed in.

"Belgium did not take sufficient action to correct its deficit ... it missed both nominal target and on average the required structural fiscal effort," the European Union's economics chief Olli Rehn said in his usual lively manner Wednesday. But while the country narrowly avoided fines, which "could go against the principle of non-retroactivity which is essential in European law," according to Mr. Rehn, it has a lot to fix.

Eurocrats, beer-sipping expats and whole Facebook pages love to moan about Brussels life, but the commission has formalized this process. In the country-specific recommendations for Belgium, it basically hands Prime Minister Elio di Rupo and his colleagues a to-do list. It's not pretty, but here is Real Time Brussels' translated guide to selected highlights.

OMG the traffic jams are so bad you are wasting 2% of gross domestic product (the surprise is it's only 2%):