Brussels: Coffee Instead of a Career

Published on June 30, 2014

SocietyEU-TOPIA: Time to VoteEU-TOPIA: Brussels

"Three cap­puc­ci­nos with soy milk, one nor­mal, two espres­sos and extra sugar, please." Flavia rolls her eyes on the in­side. When such an order comes, she knows what it means. A trainee from the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment has been sent to fetch cof­fee for his en­tire de­part­ment. The young Greek ner­vously stares at his piece of paper, over­whelmed by the many spe­cial re­quests. Flavia smiles at him en­cour­ag­ingly. She too would have been charged with such tasks if she had been ac­cepted for an in­tern­ship at the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment. But, she wasn't.

A year ago, the Ital­ian came to Brus­sels — one of around 8000 young peo­ple from across Eu­rope who flock to Bel­gium's cap­i­tal each year. All share the hope of se­cur­ing an in­tern­ship to kick­start their ca­reer in one of the many EU in­sti­tu­tions. Flavia was con­vinced that doors would open for her after study­ing Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence in Rome. Pretty naive, she says today.

Too naive for Brus­sels?

"I handed out my CV every­where, like fly­ers, but no­body took me. There is too much com­pe­ti­tion here." Steam from the dish­washer en­velops the 23-year old. Now, Flavia is work­ing be­hind the counter of a café, serv­ing those whose ranks she de­sired to join. Al­ways smelling of freshly brewed cof­fee, Kars­mak­ers is lo­cated di­rectly across from the gi­gan­tic EU Par­lia­ment build­ing. At lunchtime, the queue of well-dressed par­lia­men­tar­i­ans snakes into the street. Here, you have to move quickly. Flavia ties her dark hair back in a pony­tail, throws a cloth over her shoul­der and grabs the tray of bagels. She serves cus­tomers with agile move­ments. Pol­i­tics eats lunch here. The small Ital­ian dis­ap­pears among the black suits. Dis­ap­pointed, she notes: "Hardly any­one knows that I also stud­ied po­lit­i­cal sci­ence. For most of them, I am noth­ing more than the many other wait­resses at Place Lux."

Pol­i­tics takes its lunch break at flavia's café

Place Lux is the mon­icker used by in­sid­ers for Place du Lux­em­bourg. One MEP af­fec­tion­ately called it the beat­ing heart of Brus­sels. The 1,200 m² sur­face on the front steps of the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment, with its many bars and cafés, has be­come one of the most pop­u­lar meet­ing points of a gen­er­a­tion of Eu­ro­pean politi­cians or those who want to be­come one.

Thomas walks around the plaza, con­cen­trated. Only a few hun­dred me­tres from Kars­mak­ers, the 27-year-old Bel­gian man­ages Coco, one of the trendi­est bars in the city. Through an ear­piece, he out­lines the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion to his em­ploy­ees. Today is Thurs­day. And Thurs­day means the ding­ing of the cash reg­is­ter for Thomas. Al­though there is still quiet in the warm af­ter­noon sun, but young Eu­rope will soon de­scend on this place. "As many as 3,000 peo­ple party here. It's a unique ex­pe­ri­ence," the Brus­sels na­tive ex­plains en­thu­si­as­ti­cally. Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans make up 95% of his best cus­tomers. So it is not sur­pris­ing that the ta­bles are tightly cling­ing to the curb, dan­ger­ously close to the road, and sign­boards ad­ver­tise their Happy Hour spe­cials to at­tract well-pay­ing cus­tomers.

Music Blares, loosen the ties

After work, all those who keep EU ap­pa­ra­tus turn­ing spill out onto the plaza. The sounds of Eu­rope are every­where — a wild babel of lan­guages fills the place. Beer cups are filled every sec­ond, music blares from the speak­ers, ties are loos­ened. Trainees ban­ter to­gether on the small green area at the cen­tre of the square. How­ever, there is some­thing more im­por­tant than Ap­erol and beer. The eyes of those who are only in Brus­sels for a short time scan their sur­round­ings rest­lessly back and forth. Here, one will see and be seen. Lob­by­ists look­ing for par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, in­terns for MEPs — all hunt­ing for im­por­tant con­tacts. Thomas smiles while look­ing at the in­dus­tri­ous ex­change of busi­ness cards. Net­work­ing is ul­ti­mately his busi­ness.

"On the week­end, how­ever, there is hardly any­thing going on be­cause no­body is work­ing here. Ex­cept for the few lost tour­sits, it looks like the Grand Canyon. You can scream out loud, but the echo comes back. It's a strange place. Even those from Brus­sels do not come here." Even Thomas didn't know what to make of it at first. Until he smelled big money. Since then, he spends al­most every day here and puts all his en­ergy into this lit­tle bar. The busi­ness­man tol­er­ates the dark cir­cles under his eyes. It is the many young peo­ple who came look­ing for a ca­reer that en­abled him to ad­vance in his own ca­reer path. 

Pol­i­tics? Never again

Until re­cently, Flavia was still hop­ing that Brus­sels would be her spring­board. For this pe­tite woman with shin­ing brown eyes, Place Lux means not only work, but above all, the end of a dream. "The world of pol­i­tics frus­trates me. Even if I only serve cof­fee here, I un­der­stand more than I would like. Ul­ti­mately, it is all talk with lit­tle ac­tion. De­spite that there are re­ally im­por­tant is­sues."

For ex­am­ple, youth un­em­ploy­ment in her home coun­try. In Italy, the rate was 42.4% in Jan­u­ary. Flavia has de­cided to re­turn to Rome to begin her mas­ter's de­gree, but she knows that she will have a hard time there as a young stu­dent. Part-time jobs are poorly paid and there is a low prob­a­bil­ity of find­ing a good job. "My fa­ther tried to con­vince me not to come back be­cause it is even more dif­fi­cult there," says Flavia. There­fore, she is now try­ing to save as much money as pos­si­ble. But even if she did not achieve her dream, the am­bi­tious young woman does not re­gret com­ing to Brus­sels. "At least I gained valu­able in­sight into the 'EU bub­ble,' al­though not as I'd hoped. But now I am more cer­tain about which di­rec­tion I want to go. And it is cer­tainly not into pol­i­tics."

Shortly after eight o'clock. While net­work­ing is in full swing at Place Lux and Thomas or­ders new beer kegs, Flavia closes Kars­mak­ers and hur­ries to­ward the sub­way. She is happy to be able to turn her back on the plaza. Nev­er­the­less, Place Lux is unique, you have to give it that.

THIS AR­TI­CLE IS PART OF A SPE­CIAL EDI­TION DED­I­CATED TO BRUS­SELS as part of the PRO­JECT "EU-TOPIA TIME TO VOTE" INI­TI­ATED BY Cafébabel, IN PART­NER­SHIP WITH THE FOUN­DA­TION Hip­pocrene, THE EU­RO­PEAN COM­MIS­SION, THE DE­PART­MENT OF FOR­EIGN AF­FAIRS AND THE FOUN­DA­TION EVENtS.

Translated from Brüssel: Kaffee statt Karriere