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Brussels’ army of 'slave interns’ escapes EU gaze

12:33 28/06/2013

Thousands of young graduates toil on the Brussels treadmill without job security, benefits or sometimes even a salary under the noses of European Union leaders meeting this week to declare war on youth unemployment, reports Reuters’ Anders Melin. “When you’re just rolling from one unpaid traineeship to another, you’re not on a path to anywhere,” says Alex Godson, who has a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Manchester and had to rely on his parents for money. “There’s always that intern in the office, and you’re just the person holding that position at the moment.” He bounced from one low-paid traineeship to another for three years before finally landing a proper job in May at the European Movement International, a Brussels-based group that lobbies for a federal Europe.

EU leaders have pledged to ensure that every young European who is out of work will be offered a proper job, training or an apprenticeship within four months. They will announce more money to back that drive today. But if they just look around them, they will see plenty of unpaid or underpaid youth slaving away in Europe’s engine room. Often dependent on grants or donations that shrink when the economy turns down, the many non-governmental organizations and think tanks in Brussels have become increasingly reliant on short-term hires. Graduates trying to build a CV make a good fit – young, ambitious and willing to put in long hours at very low pay. The European Commission offers some 1,400 sought-after five-month traineeships a year with a €1,074 monthly salary that is top tier, according to Sophia Kabir, a representative for the networking organization Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. This so-called “stage,” French for work experience, is often the first rung on an EU career ladder. Yet the pay is well below the Belgian minimum wage requirement of €1,500 per month. Many other advertised positions offer monthly stipends of a few hundred euros and sometimes nothing at all.

 “Even in the offices of some members of the parliament there are trainees employed who are paid very little or nothing at all,” Franz Obermayr, an Austrian member of the European Parliament, complained in a letter to the legislature’s president, Martin Schulz. Traineeships are supposed to provide training, but the line between that and actual employment is often blurred.

“It’s modern slavery,” Kabir said. “People in my generation are struggling to understand their market value.”

Written by The Bulletin

Comments

Poppy2

I agree totally. I have just been offered the possibility of joining a tender as a web editor for an 8-month contract in a big DG in the EC at 100 EUR per day as an independent (i.e. I have to take care of my own medical insurance and income tax)! By the time I take off my deductions, I would be earning around 7 EUR per hour! This is scandalous.

Jun 28, 2013 16:58