Trials and tribulations of being among privileged few

Date: 09/11/1995

DURING conference in the first week of the stage, the favourite questions asked in coffee breaks were “what DG are you in?” and “are you a lawyer or an economist?”

But the obvious question: “What are you going to do?” never came up. I later found out that this was because virtually no one knew what they were going to do during the following five months.

I had studied anthropology and knew that I had a stage in the environment unit of DGI (the Directorate-General for external relations). I assumed that I would be dealing with environmental issues and hoped that my background in anthropology would be useful.

In hindsight, I was very lucky. I was given the opportunity to use my knowledge of anthropology to work with project officers on environmental schemes involving indigenous peoples.

But others were not so lucky. There were eight stagiaires in the office where I worked: three of us were actively involved in the work of our stage advisors, two made photocopies all day for their stage adviser, another two were given “background reading” for five months and one read the newspaper from cover to cover every day. Three out of eight gained valuable experience, but the other five gained nothing.

An increase in demand has forced an increase in the number of stages available. This may seem like good news, but the expansion has not been planned or monitored and has consequently created ridiculous situations such as the one experienced by the newspaper-reading stagiaire.

I wanted to do a stage for two reasons. Primarily, I thought it would be interesting and

perhaps exciting to work inside the European Commission.

Secondly, I thought it would look good on my curriculum vitae. The work I did was indeed very interesting and occasionally exciting. The social life was great - if you had enough money.

I was an unpaid stagiaire (as are the majority of trainees), which was not really a problem until near the end of the stage, when I was rapidly running out of money. But I have no doubt that it is the main reason why I have my current job.

The stage system was created to give the future professionals of Europe a chance to see the work of the European Commission from the inside. The idea was that they would develop the ideal of European integration during their professional careers.

I met only one stagiaire who had a job arranged for after the stage - almost all wanted to add it to their c.v. in order to improve their chances of becoming a professional. The prestige of having a stage on your c.v. in an increasingly competitive job market has meant that the competition for places has become very fierce. I travelled to Brussels twice to lobby on my own behalf and met very few others who had not done the same, unless they had contacts in the Commission who could “help them out”.

The people I worked with often told me that my stage was boring, there were not enough parties or seminars or talks by director-generals. I have spoken to people who were stagiaires five, ten and 20 years ago, who all talked of stages involving a wide variety of activities organised by stagiaires for stagiaires.

Perhaps there were negative aspects of previous stages that have been forgotten, but it seems clear that the stagiaires of the 1990s are not as well organised as they were in the past.

I gained a great deal of valuable work experience while on the scheme. I did learn more about the issues associated with European integration, but I learnt much more about the environmental projects involving the indigenous peoples the Commission supports.

I think that the stage is an excellent idea that has been neglected. The management of the scheme is ineffective, insufficient resources are allocated to it and the training component does not receive enough attention.

The question the Commission should ask itself is whether it would fund the stage scheme if it was a proposal for a Commission-funded project in another institution?