Sib Hayer in Brussels

Welcome to my first weekly blog from Brussels. Let me briefly explain what I’m doing here. Basically I’m a stagiaire, a trainee, at the European Commission. Bi-annually, for five months, around 600 young Europeans are selected to work in one the 22 (?) departments here and in Luxembourg. The application process is not too cumbersome: you apply on-line, listing your three preferred departments to work for (bearing in mind that most departments will probably only consider you if you selected them as your top choice), and then hope to be selected for entry into the ‘Blue Book’, of which around only one in four applicants succeed. At that point, your name will be passed around each department, and you hope to be called for a telephone interview, which if you do well in will hopefully result in the offer of a traineeship. I had my interview after someone had withdrawn from the placement, in the Trade department, so was quite lucky. There are 17 trainees in total within the department, selected from an original applicant list of 2000.
That’s the background, so what’s it like being here, and what’s Brussels like? It’s been a while since Europe was headline news in the UK as a result of the focus on local elections and taxation issues, apart from possibly the record ruling by the Commission to fine Microsoft $1 billion for anti-competitive practices last week. But that ruling just illustrates how important Europe is, as a regional entity, as a trading bloc and as a political project.
The great thing is how involved you can get as a trainee, which is as much as you want really, and I’ve only been here a week. The exposure to high level dialogue is phenomenal, and if political stuff really turns you on then you feel like you’re in the right place.
Fortunately my apartment is about two minutes from the office, in the Schuman area, which is a lot of the EU buildings are. Schuman is a relaxed place, almost as relaxed as the pace of the escalators which ascend from its Metro station. It’s quiet at the weekend but after work on the weekdays it’s full of Eurocrats and tourists alike enjoying a casual beer, the choice of which is unprecedented worldwide. It’s fairly easy to get around, and it’s the only Belgian city where signs legally have to be displayed in French and Flemish simultaneously.
This week has just been about settling in and acclimatising. I started French lessons on Monday, where fortunately I am not the least clued-up individual, although I did manage to insinuate that the word ‘turc’ was some kind of animal. Fortunately there were no Turks in the class to take offense and take me outside for extra-curricular guillotine practice. I found a ‘charcuterie’ (meat shop, I remembered from GCSE French) which also displayed itself a ‘slagerie’ (which I couldn’t recall), so I quickly walked on by in pursuit of groceries elsewhere. Moby turned up out of the blue on Wednesday for a free concert somewhere in the city but by the time any of us had heard about it while we were playing football it was all over. On Thursday one of my colleagues and I found a fantastic restaurant at 66 Rue Defarqz, in the Louise area, a husband and wife operation (which almost makes you feel that you are walking into somebody’s kitchen, and they even know when the toilet is occupied) that serves three delicate servings of French and international food and a delicious tarte citron all for around ten euros.
As it’s a long weekend I’ve had the chance to watch some telly, which shows programmes in a variety of languages. Currently I’m enjoying listening to dire attempts to dub Homer Simpson and Scooby Doo in French and the Coco Pops advert in Dutch (somehow the jingle still manages to be catchy). I’m off on a treasure hunt now, one of the many events organised by the stagiaire committee, and it’s the perfect weather for it. I tried to tell my colleagues I brought this amazing sunshine with me, but when I told them I’m from the UK they just laughed in my face for some reason.