The US ambassador to Belgium has left a formal reprimand at the Belgian foreign ministry without apologising, saying he would keep posting his opinions on social media.
Bill White spent about an hour and a half with foreign minister Maxime Prévot in Brussels on August 31. He arrived in conciliatory mood, telling the commercial broadcaster VTM he was pleased to see Prévot and that the two men had important business to discuss.
White also mentioned plans for a new US embassy in the city and economic ties between the two countries. What he was unhappy about, he said, was having to answer for something he had put on a personal account.
Prévot told the ambassador that public statements aimed personally at Belgian officials could not be accepted, according to a statement issued by his office. He said further provocations would be counterproductive and risked an unnecessary escalation in relations between the two countries.
The row began on August 28, when White published an apparently AI-generated image of health minister Frank Vandenbroucke on an Instagram story. The picture showed the minister on a cigar box carrying a mock warning that he damaged every form of joy in life.
“Who’s the biggest LOSER in Belgium?” the ambassador wrote above the image.
The post took aim at Vandenbroucke’s push to toughen the health message carried by alcohol advertising, replacing wording on alcohol abuse with a blunter statement that alcohol damages health. Belgian brewers have written to the government opposing the change.
The underlying royal decree on alcohol advertising was notified to the European Commission under the EU’s technical standards procedure, which allows member states and industry to object to national rules that fragment the single market.
Spanish authorities and European wine and brewing associations argued the measures would force producers in other member states to alter labelling and packaging at additional cost.
It was the second such summons for White this year. In February he was called in after describing an Antwerp investigation into three Jewish ritual circumcisers as anti-Semitic and urging Vandenbroucke to intervene.
White, a Trump donor confirmed in the post in late 2025, is one of several US envoys in Europe to have been rebuked by host governments. Charles Kushner was summoned by the French Government in February over remarks on the death of a right-wing activist in Lyon.
