Interimaire are traineesWhile everybody else was thinking of becoming an astronaut or a princess, a trainee, as a child, had only one dream: "Working in the European Institutions". And they never gave it up! They sent their cv, they filled in creative motivation letters, they learned to use the ugly ECAS website,... that failed to become Contract AgentsBecoming a Contract Agent (abbr. CA) is the first step to become a eurocrat. You just need to perform the following tasks: • Be invited to a CAST Competition (hint: networking is required). There are several that grant you access to a certain functional group (e. g. FG I to... and ended up in the institutions’ purgatory: they work hard, pay taxes on their salary (the ultimate Eurocrat’s shame), and have a weekly renewable contract with some greedy service provider. On top of that they receive permanent staff emails, in which Commission’s Unions complain about their violated rights.
Their life balance is incredibly unstable: for every five months they work, they need to take a month off (unpaid). They can also never be sure whether their contract will be renewed. Because of that, they spend most of their time playing matchmaker for their colleagues, in the hope that this might eventually result in a maternity leave (i.e. an open temporary position for them to grab).