EU for US

Develop your internal network in social media

2012-01-18T01:26:00.000-08:00

While working with the EU as a consultant, I've learned a lot about the importance of an internal network. You can have the best ideas in the world, but if you've got no insider support for what you plan to do, you won't get anything done. Every Directorate General benefits from already-established as well as in-the-making internal networks.

But an internal network is more than just support for a departmental initiative. It's a ready and waiting team of influencers and multipliers that can help you get the word out about the great stuff you and your team just accomplished. Let me explain what I mean when it comes to creating and effectively using an internal network for EU social media:

1. Establish an internal communication network. Everyone in this network has to have three qualities: they want to participate in social media; they want to talk about what they are doing; they feel comfortable talking about what they are doing.

2. Tell everyone in your internal network to develop their networks in social media. Whether they tweet, blog, post on Facebook, discuss in LinkedIn groups, etc. they need to make certain that they have people interested in what they are saying. Tell them to worry more about who's listening than how many - networks are more effective if they are influential, not if they are huge and vague.

3. Establish guidelines. Nothing too structured or hierarchical, but with clear dos and don'ts. Good guidelines say things like

Don't talk about potential policy initiative X because it's not ready yet.
Do talk about recently released policy Y.
Don't fight.
Do share facts.
Do respond to questions - if you know the answer, share it. If you don't, refer the question to a link.
Do be clear about who you are and who you work for.
Do be positive when discussing your work and your ideas. In fact, be positive as much as possible.
Do be helpful and interesting in what you talk about and how you talk about it.
Don't be negative (unless, maybe, you're talking about recent media dictatorships in Hungary.)

4. Get support from on high. No one in a bureacracy where so much about your career is determined by what you may have done wrong (and what you may or may not have done right) is going to do social media unless their hierarchy endorses it. You have to feel that you have the trust of the big boss(es) in order to feel really comfortable engaging in social media.

5. Make up a communications calendar and enforce it. Everyone in the internal social media network needs to know what you, the DG, wants to communicate this month. If they know, they can make sure that they talk about it. And don't just tell your internal network 'talk about human rights in February.' Tell them what human rights your Commissioner is going to emphasise in his/her blog/speech/presentation, when s/he's going to do it, and in conjunction with what initiatives and external events. Give the internal network members time digest the information and find an angle that will appeal to their networks.

5. Make sure the members of your internal network can add their input to the communications calendar. Every department, unit, etc. has something coming up that they've been working on for weeks, months, maybe even years. Let them mobilise the network to trumpet about what they've accomplished. In department meetings, let the internal network members raise accomplishments that are coming up and put these accomplishments into the communications calendar - 'Next month, we all need to tweet, blog, and post about Unit B's Conference which happens in the middle of the month. It covers this issue, in this way, and will involve these stakeholders. You can find the programme and the supporting press releases on this website.' Not only will Unit B feel special, they'll also be anxious to help Unit E spread the word about their upcoming Facebook chat.

If the everybody works for the network, then the network works for everybody. The only thing that need be centralised is the coordination, and that's easily fixed with a calendar.

What's the tone of EU social media?

2012-01-10T15:14:00.000-08:00

In tone, successful social media is meant to engage and enlighten, the way a nice conversation with a friend (or even a random stranger) can. Such unexpected chats add value to your life. They take a concern or an idea and explore it with you, offering some personal perspective.

Yet some official EU media is too often stiff and carefully scripted. Rather than offer insight, it pontificates, raining down predictable proclamations that clutter rather than clarify an issue. Like muzak in a grocery store, there's a studied lack of originality to many of these official channels, as if they want want to be ignored while European consumers get on with their shopping. There's no recognition of a particular audience and no attempt to try and connect with anyone who might be listening.

Thankfully, this isn't the case for all official EU media. Commissioner Neelie Kroes is a good example. She has a blog where she asks questions, talks about what she's learned, and explores issues that she claims are close to her heart.

The Commissioner doesn't do it alone either. While she's restricted in her candor by her position, she has an active team of EU officials on Twitter that cultivate their own networks and explore her topics in official and unofficial tweets. These EU users know their audience and their issues, and they do their best to make sure one understands the other - adding a bit of their own personality into the communication mix.

Commissioner Kroes, along with her Digital Agenda team, makes her social media a discussion space. While her own tweets may be more 'what I'm reading' and less 'what I think', she compensates with her blog and her active team of social media enthusiasts who engage their networks in considering and reviewing what DG INFSO and the Commissioner are up to.

Another good example still getting off the ground are the different EU delegations that Facebook, tweet, and even Weibo. 40+ EU delegations are using social media to develop relationships with local networks - using the native languages and social media platforms.

When adopting a tone in social media, it's good to keep the following four rules in mind:

Know your audience. Keep what you post about relevant and interesting to the people you're posting for. Post in their language about their issues. Find out the tone that they prefer in social media - informal, ironic, introspective? Learn what your audience expects and what they want and respond to this. And keep in touch - no audience is static, so be aware of how your audience evolves.
Keep your content clear, concise, up-to-date, and unique. Your content should be what your audience wants and expects and then it should be something more. Include a bonus in every piece of content that you post that promotes you as a source of information and ideas - this could be insider information (that you are allowed to disclose of course), official quotes, an update on a trending issue, or an informed opinion about a current event important to the network.
Show, don't tell. Social media is an experience, not a soapbox. Random tweets and off-kilter blog posts are acceptable, but they shouldn't be the norm. Set up a series of tweets that tell a story, explore an important issue, or cover a pivotal event live. Make sure your online and offline communications are aligned and supporting each other.

These are just some quick tips to consider when planning your social media tone when it comes to official EU media. Feel free to share any others that you think are important.

The European Commission and mass communication

2011-11-06T12:53:00.000-08:00

There are two issues when it comes to the European Commission and mass communication: leadership and audience. Fortunately, these issues are pretty easily resolved by the EC's communication units - provided they have the flexibility and the support they need.

Issue 1: Leadership - The EC leadership has to realize that they can't make the press or the public listen to them.

The EC is big and complicated: 27 countries (plus two new members next year), plus policies, laws, and regulations in 23 official languages. It can take years to get lawmakers in the EC to understand a policy initiative and then several more years to get everyone to agree to a solution. Even then, it can be decades before everyone agrees in the same way. (Often, it's left up to the European Court of Justice to work out how the details of the final piece of legislation can be applied.)

No wonder EC leadership in particular policy areas is overjoyed when a directive passes or new regulation implemented. EC policy leaders want to run, jump, scream, and let every European from the tip of Finland to the island outposts of Greece know that after years of careful diplomacy and cautious debate they have accomplished a meeting of the minds.

Unfortunately, as any honest press or PR agent will tell you, just because policymakers make a policy does not mean anyone wants to hear about it. Policy-making is a thankless job: few people appreciate policymakers when their job is well-done and everyone blames them when something goes wrong.

EC leadership has got to realize that they cannot expect the rest of the EC to notice when they've done well. They cannot push the press or the people to talk about what they just did. It's childish to even try. Only two-year-olds can respectfully shout 'Look at me' in public.

Fortunately, that is why the EC has communication units in Brussels and in every other EU Member State. These communication units collect positive information about the work of the EC. Thanks to a steady flow of information and updates from the policymakers themselves, these communication units are composed of experts on what the EC has accomplished where, why, and how it will make each country and the overall continent better off.

At the moment, these units are too often used by EC leadership as one-way channels for promoting the latest policy rather than as PR experts that can advise about how best to communicate the EU's success. The units are sometimes treated like broadcast stations, accepting and replicating the latest transmissions from Brussels without being allowed to customize the story for the local public. Thus these transmissions are largely ignored by press and public alike.

If these communication units were given more discretion and flexibility, they could collect positive information to be released at the right moment to the most enthusiastic audience to get the best results. While this approach may require a little more patience (and a little less interference) from Brussels-based leadership, it would make it easier for the EC's good work to be recognized. And, after all the time it takes to get the work done, it'd be a shame to bury it under the tide of public disinterest.

Issue 2: Audience - the EC has got to start telling people what they want to hear.

I don't mean that the EC needs to roll over and give the people what they want. I mean that the EC has to stop trying to tell everyone what the EC wants them to know.

Instead, the EC could identify specific audiences that are looking for important information that the EC provides. Then the EC could give these active and attentive audiences the information that they want when they want it.

Today, people are information-seekers and story-makers, posting their questions to Twitter rather than saving them for a press conference. If there's no response from the EC, then people fashion their own opinions. By the time the EC organizes an official statement, public sentiment has hardened and moved on. What the spokespersons have to say is no longer interesting.

That's why audiences need to be identified before the group's opinion solidifies. Find out who's talking about what, where, and to whom, and you've found an audience. Determine what type of information that audience is looking for, in what format, and why, and you have an opportunity to communicate. Provide the desired information in the right format with the right approach, and you've successfully averted being irrelevant.

This issue could also be solved by the EC's already-existing communication units. Instead of simply speaking for the EC, the communication units could also help the EC speak for itself. Some of them already do this with a large amount of success.

Part of the job of any communication expert is to be an audience expert - to know the top topics and influencers in their country and region. An EC communication expert could collect this information and transmit it to the policymakers. The policymakers could then respond with a statement or timely, accurate details that the audience needs. Policymakers could communicate directly with the interested audience.

At best, the EC will become an important source of information among influencers. At worse, people will be listening to the EC - and that has to happen before the EC can hope for better.

The infrastructure to successfully communicate with Europeans is there. It's up to the EC to take advantage of it.

European communications and social media

2011-11-03T14:58:00.000-07:00

European communications through more socia media would be a good idea right about now.

Communicating through social media could help people understand what the EU does, who does it, and how. It could help people understand not only the EU's relevance, but its benefits. And that's something people need to know - right about now.

In turbulent times, people start to question the relevance of their institutions - national and otherwise. Politicians and bureaucrats have to work extra hard to justify their decisions and, sometimes, their very existence. With jobs disappearing and private businesses shutting down, people have less money to spend and thus more anxiety about how the money that's left is spent.

We look at our public servants and institutions and we start to wonder what we're paying for. What are we getting out of this? What's the point? I pay taxes and these people take them and then I don't hear anything about what they did with the money. And right about now I could really use the money.

Add to that the problem of transparency. Few people quite know exactly what the EU does, nor do they understand exactly how it is done. But they have the nagging suspicion that the people working at the EU have pretty secure jobs, nice pensions, and a few other benefits that the average European has had to recently give up.

It's easy to understand what the average European must be feeling right now. I mean, just imagine.

Imagine if you paid a neighbor twenty euros a week to maintain the neighborhood. The neighborhood looks nice most of the time, and you have the cash, so the arrangement seems fair. Then one day you and a bunch of other neighbors are forced to take a large cut in your salaries. You have to buy less food. You start renting out rooms to make ends meet, moving your family and poorer relatives who lost their jobs into the back of the house so the front rooms can be let to other neighbors that have lost their jobs and thus can't afford their own homes anymore.

You find yourself giving up vacations that you used to take, not eating out anymore, watching restaurants where you used to eat out close due to lack of business. Moreover, the neighborhood, since it has more people with less money, starts to look a little seedy. The empty storefronts are boarded up, you see cheap pawn shops where you used to have lovely little organic bodegas. There are people sleeping in the streets at night and loitering listlessly on the sidewalks all day. Overall, things just don't look or feel that good anymore.

Yet each week you still have to pay the neighbor maintaining the neighborhood twenty euros, as does every other poor sod still living in the neighborhood. And the neighbor collecting the twenty euros each week claims to be maintaining the neighborhood - in fact, they claim that they may need even more money to maintain the neighborhood because things have gotten so bad all round.

Wouldn't you be just the least little bit suspicious? Wouldn't you be curious about where the twenty euros that you donate is going? Wouldn't you start to gossip with your poor neighbors in the front room, with the owners of the pawn shops, with the going-out-of-business restauranteurs, with all the poor university students graduating and moving back in with their families and learning that it may be a while before they get to apply their newly acquired skills for profit? Wouldn't you want some sort of justification from the neighbor collecting the twenty euros, some sort of tangible evidence that they are doing more for you and for the neighborhood with the twenty euros than you can do with it?

Right now, more than ever, people out there are gossiping about the EU. And they're gossiping in public. They're talking online. They are questioning what the EU does, how it does it, whether what it does is helping or harming Greece, Germany, Ireland, Finland and the rest of the 23 Member States. They are debating the EU in forums, commenting on newspaper articles, blogging about their disappointment and their admiration.

They've made Facebook pages that promote the EU and Facebook pages that call for its immediate end. These European citizens active in social media are on the left and they are on the right. (And all this I've obtained from only a two-minute search of the social media storm in English.) The EU has never before attracted a more active and relentless audience.

Yet, for the most part, the EU is silent.

In some cases, silence is warranted. It puts you above the conversation. It keeps you safe from saying anything you might later regret. It ensures that you appear untouched by the common populist politics that underly a lot of modern debate. It makes you appear elite, uninterested.

Remote.

Right now, the EU cannot afford to be remote. People need to know that the EU is listening and that its doing something. They need some sort of European sense of community - maybe even some European leadership. Things have gone from bad to worse and even President Barroso noted that "This is going to be a baptism of fire for a whole generation." Yet the EU needs us to keep contributing, not only with our ever-shrinking cashflow but also with our equally wobbly faith in the European project (ironic, given our uncomfortable baptism). Yet we've found out Greece lied, Spain (poor Spain) may be overly-optimistic, and even Italy may be less stable than it appears. Plus, Finland and the Netherlands are re-thinking the whole idea and may leave, and Germany's Merkel, Mistress of the euro, may not be in power for much longer partly because she supports the euro.

And the people at the top that are supposed to keep it all together - keep us all together - are not even actively participating in the public debate. They gather together behind closed doors and emerge occasionally to spout reassuringly vague aphorisms that drive the stock market crazy.

Meanwhile, the neighborhood is looking seedier.

Any intelligent PR professional at this point would be shoving the local leadership into the public eye, making the man (or woman) in charge pound the pavement of the neighborhood (so to speak), orate with passion to crowds of farmers, look hopeful and determined amidst a crowd of single mothers, kiss babies, shake hands, march with students. They'd have the leadership at least LOOK involved in the plight of the common people. Sure, some of this would be a cheap attempt to appeal to the crowd, but even the crowd likes a little fake love. I mean, if you care enough to fake it, at least you care.

The EU could send out its legions of press and spokespersons, its communication teams and public relations experts to talk to the people. And these EU mouthpieces wouldn't even need to leave Brussels. They don't need to hold an event or march down the street waving a starry blue flag. They just need to go online and read, watch, and listen to what people have to say. The conversations and the captive audience are already there and already hungry for information.

What's more is that these spokespeople don't have to worry about what they say if they don't want to. They don't have to get involved in political wrestling matches or risk exposing their backsides to the angry masses. They can content themselves with simple fact-sharing and clear explanations about procedure. They can talk about how what's being done is being done. When you can't be political, be procedural. In the past, this approach has saved bureaucrats a lot of headache when it comes to communicating with the public.

EU spokespersons can feed the hungry with simple information. Instead of sending out another press release, they can themselves visit the blogs, the Twitter feeds, the forums, and the YouTube channels that are dissecting the EU's actions. They can act as go-betweens for the institutions, identifying citizen concerns for the EU officials, clarifying issues and correcting misinformation for the citizens. They can point citizens looking for more information towards media that's getting it right and politely inform media that's getting it wrong where they are in error. They can connect with citizens, reassure them that they are listening and then tell them what else they're doing and where the citizens can go to learn more about it.

It's not enough for the EU to rely on the official press to do this sort of work - not only is that shafting the citizenry (how would you feel if your neighbor collecting the twenty euros every week sent some reporter to tell you how great he was? Bet you'd wonder about how he's spending the twenty euros...) - it's waiting until it's too late. These days the press is often reacting to public sentiment rather than the other way around. Like the stock market, much of the modern news media is built on making money and tends to push the news that will attract cash rather than build confidence. To make up for what the paid press can't afford, the EU has to fill in the gaps, going to where the conversation is and letting everybody know that you know what they're talking about, that you care, and that you're working on it.

Let us know that you appreciate our twenty euros - and let us know how you're putting it to use.

Drink like a Bruxellois(e)

2011-10-17T15:01:00.000-07:00

Belgium is THE place for beer. Brussels is the capital.

Beer connoisseurs the world over are awed by the selection available in our fair city. You could drink a different label of beer every day for two years and still not have tried everything. Approximately 120 different Belgian breweries produce between 700 to 800 beer labels throughout this tiny country. Belgian beers are divided into Lambic beers, brown/red beers, trappist beers (made by monks, e.g. the famous Westvleteren beer), champagne beers, saisons, lagers (like Jupiler and Maes), abbey beers (not necessarily made by monks), etc. Brussels in particular is famous for the production of beers of spontaneous fermentation.

You can try Brussels-made beer almost anywhere in the city, but there are certain Brussels brasseries where the ambience is, well, more Bruxellois. And if you're going to do Belgian beer in Brussels, it's best to do it where you can experience a bit of the local flavor, and not just as it tickles your taste buds. So here are a few places that you can visit to sample the many beverages the Bruxellois have to offer.

1. A La Bécasse (In The Snipe) This place celebrated 130 years of family ownership in 2007. It's reputedly the oldest brasserie in the city. The Steppé family bought the pub for 15.000 Belgian francs in 1877. Formerly called Estaminet, no one knows where today's name came from. Found on Taborastraat / rue de Tabora, the street named for the Belgian victory in Tabora, Tanzania in 1916 (yes, the pub is older than the street name), this charming old tavern has some fantastic Sweet Lambic Timmermans and White Lambic Timmermans. Go on a cold, rainy day and curl up in the warm atmosphere with a nice mug of gueze and a good book.

2. Le Guignol (the Puppet) has two locations, with one on Rue Voot 32 in Woluwe-St-Lambert and one in Uccle on the Chaussee de St. Job. Both can be a bit crowded, indicating the good Belgian cuisine on hand requires company. The expert staff here has also had some good word-of-mouth - they let you know which dishes are delicious and which beer goes best with what.

3. Brasseries Georges can be a bit pricy, but it is a nice place to take out-of-towners or host an event. Get the mussels or the duck with garlic fried potatoes. One reviewer for Zagat noted 'some of the menu selections are so Belgian you cannot find them anywhere else'. While I'm not certain if that's true - Zagat seems to have missed a number of nice Belgian restaurants - it is true that the place offers some distinctive Belgian cuisine and beer. Located at 220 Winston Churchillaan / Avenue de Winston Churchill in Uccle.

4. La Taverne du Passage, located in the Galeries Royales St. Hubert, is open from 12 am to midnight. Also a bit pricy, it's a good place to stop for beer or wine (it won a an award for its extensive wine list). I'm not so certain the food is worth the money, but the drinks are delicious and reasonably priced, and you can't beat the dry, warm atmosphere on a windy and wet Belgian day. I often go before catching a movie at Cinema Arenberg.

5. Aux Armes de Bruxelles is open to 11 pm (and a bit later on Saturdays). In addition to having been frequented by Belgian King Leopold III, this brasserie, founded in the 1920s, claims to have been the place where 'moules a l'escargot' was born. Located at 13 Beenhouwersstraat.

6. Chez François, found near Place St. Catherine, is a nice place to take someone you want to impress. The neighborhood is lovely and usually pretty busy, especially during the Brussels Christmas market or Plaisirs d'Hiver, held in and around the Place. Be prepared to spend some money - a location like this does not come cheap. Make it a Christmas present to yourself.

7. Les Brassins on Rue Keyenveld is just across from the house in which Hollywood star Audrey Hepburn was born. I recommend this place when you want to experience some robust Belgian eating and drinking in a warm, golden atmosphere on a cold windy night. Call for reservations and then fight your way through the weather and the dark alleyways to this nice little oasis. Stop to read the plaque in front of Audrey's birthplace and then maybe catch an independent film at the Cinema Styx. Never let it be said that I don't know how to enjoy Brussels.

8. Au Stekerlapatte is best when busy, so go on a weekend (or better yet during the Brussels Jazz Marathon). Lonely Planet ranks this number nine in its list of things to do in Belgium - after the Belga Queen, which causes me to question their hierarchy. Au Stekerlaplatte is far more exciting than the rather hoity-toity ambience found at the Queen (though the bathroom at Belga Queen is worth a visit). Located at Rue des Prêtres 4 near Hotel des Monnaies.

9. Le Petits Peres on the corner of the rue des Carmélites in Uccle is a nice place to go for dinner during the week or just a beer and a long conversation. In nice weather it has a garden and in bad weather it's warm and inviting. Open till 11 pm.

10. La Grande Porte on the Rue Notre-Seigneur in Brussels proper encourages you to bring your kids AND your dogs. Eat, drink, and be merry for around 30 euros a head. The decor includes marionettes, which should keep the kids happy. Try the carbonnades à la flamande (beef braised in beer), waterzooï à la Gantoise (chicken stew), or stoemp (mashed potatoes and either carrots or brussel sprouts).

11. Le Horlege du Sud on the Rue du Trône in Elsene is a cafe meets brasserie in a Belgium meets Africa environment. A lot of students add a bit of a rebellious air to the place, and they have live music on certain Fridays. It's big enough for about 80 people, so get there early. The staff is so popular that they are featured on the web page.

12. Au Diable Vauvert on the Rue Albert Meunier is a brasserie meets club (after 11 pm). What I remember of this place (largely frequented during my student days) is a lot of loud pop music and African Rai'NBe. But I hear it also has a terrace (in nice weather) and can be a nice place to eat Sunday brunch after they clean up from Saturday night.

13. Le Mess on Louis Schmidtboulevard / Bld Louis Schmidt in Etterbeek used to be a real army mess hall. It's surrounded by the old barrack buildings, all converted into something else. (I think the Belgian Beta Group meets in one of them.) I like the windows and the French cuisine. This is a nice place to have lunch on a sunny day. I think its closed on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, so call ahead if you can.

14. Tribeca on Avenue Louise is super-expensive to eat in (let alone spend the night), so just make your way to the second floor for a drink. Then you can see the amazing staircase and stunning architecture for free. You can look out on Louise as you sip your beer and pretend for just a minute that you're a Belgian banker in the 1920s.

15. La Esperance feels like a speak-easy out of Boardwalk Empire, but in French. An excellent example of Art Deco, take a friend when you go to this brasserie on the rue du Finistèr or you may find yourself getting, well, asked upstairs to the hotel. This place is not to be missed, if only for the history lesson it offers about the roaring Twenties.

Business in Belgium

2011-07-25T10:55:00.001-07:00

Belgian business is personal. Remember that.

American business is not.

What follows is a gross exaggeration meant only to poke fun at the differences in work culture. Please don't take it too seriously and gift me with comments of a cruel nature.

In the USA, workers tend to treat their work with a certain amount of objectivity - a certain amount of distance. You see, American workers run marathons. Americans join companies to accrue benefits and dividends, to do all they can to pump up their enterprise's value and share price, and to compete with their colleagues to be the best (and the best-paid) that their corporation has to offer. Yet, in the end, the true American works primarily for him or herself, citing his/her accomplishments in the project, the benefits he/she brings to the table, and the value of his/her skills in the present negotiation. An American runs with the company as long as the company suits his or her pace. The moment a better pace is available, the American worker speeds up and leaves their former company in the dust. Two weeks notice and it's buh-bye and thanks very much for the value added to my CV.

This works both ways. The typical American company is like a herd of runners, with each employee in the herd competing with the others in the group for the leadership position. If one runner/employee sprains an ankle, proposes maternity leave, needs some extra water or (gods forbid) wants an extra ten-minute break, then the herd is free to leave the poor wretch behind with the over-priced water bottle that he/she can no longer afford. 'We just don't think you're a good fit. Please clear out your desk in the next ten minutes and then security will escort you from the building. Bye-bye and best of luck with your future job search.'

This is very nice in some ways and not so nice in others. In the USA, business is impersonal. Americans are nice, but not so nice they would ever let you beat them - you have to earn your position again and again and again. Competition is the norm, and the only thing that spoils competition is a sore loser. If you lose to an American in business, suck it up, meet your maker, buy the little shit a congratulatory drink and take notes on her style so the next time you compete with her you can kick the crap out of her, preferably in public. On the down side, a good winner has to remember that today was her day and tomorrow is still up for grabs. So be nice, be cautious, and remind your colleagues in deed and action that you're not resting on your laurels. Running a marathon can be tiring, especially if there are several fit and ambitious prodigies on your tail.

In Belgium, there is a lot more breathing space (and a few more glass ceilings). In Belgium, business is personal. Business in Belgium is made up of relationships, networks, and personal ties. You are not only nice to people, you are actually NICE to them. You as a Belgian employee or employer are obligated to consider how your employment decisions will impact the work and lives in general of your current and potential colleagues. In Belgian business the American excuse, 'It's not personal, it's just business,' does not compute. A Belgian employer rarely just fires or just hires someone. He has to give the professional relationship time, nurture the personal contacts, work the sense of guilt and commitment - commitment not just to the goal of the project but to the people involved in realising the project. In Belgium, employees don't run marathons, they join orchestras. They bring their instruments to practice, learn their lines and their place and keep improvisation to a minimum. Workers in Belgium are at work to make some steady music, not to conquer the world.

Like the American work culture, this is nice and not so nice. If you want to build something in a Belgian enterprise, you're going to have to have a bit more patience and a bit more long-term capital than you might if you were out to build the same thing in the USA. On the same note, you will also have a lot more security and a lot more breathing room once you've built it. People respect the hierarchy here, and they won't rip you apart the first time you slow down. If competition exists, it exists at specific levels, and you won't have to worry about competing with anyone that hasn't been officially admitted to your level by you and your colleagues. Moving up the career ladder in Belgium is a bit like getting your phD, requiring years of hard labour and low cash-flow prior to being officially reviewed and approved by the people with whom you want to share the ladder rung.

Neither of these work cultures is preferable, except in the eyes of the individual. You have to pick your style and go with it. Fortunately, both work environments are available in Brussels, so once you've made your decision you can begin to warm up. Whether you want to make music or muscle is up to you.

Get married to a Belgian in Belgium

2011-06-05T14:12:00.000-07:00

An American reader planning to wed a Belgian in Belgium has provided some insight on what it's like to get legally married in Brussels.

What is a legal marriage in Belgium?

In Brussels or in any other city in Belgium, the commune in which you or your partner reside can provide you with a civil marriage. Belgium only recognises civil marriages. If a member of the clergy marries you in Belgium, it is not a legal marriage. If you want to get married in a church/mosque/temple, feel free to do so, but don't forget that you must have a civil ceremony at your (or your partner's) commune if you want the tax/EU spousal privileges that come with marrying a Belgian or EU citizen.

Step 1
Pick your preferred marriage dates. Every commune has certain days or specific afternoons of the week when the marriage is free. If you choose any other day of the week, the marriage will cost you between 250 and 300 euros. Saturday can be far more expensive - in the Brussels commune of Watermael-Botsfort, a marriage on a Saturday afternoon costs 523 euros. Picking the free day will mean waiting a bit longer than picking a day that costs.

Visit the commune sites listed at the end of this post to figure out when your free day is.

Step 2
Go to your commune with your beloved Belgian. Open a wedding dossier. Your dossier must be completed and approved at least one month but not more than 6 months prior to the date set for the wedding. If you are an American, you will need the following for your dossier:

an original birth certificate and apostille, both of which the Commune will not give back to you (collected from the US state of your birth) - 15 to 20 US dollars and about 2 weeks (for both ordering and receiving by mail)
an official translation of the birth certificate and apostille by a court-approved translator (ask for a list of these from the Commune) - 25 to 40 euros and about a week
Carte de Sejour
an 'authorised' proof of citizenship collected from the Embassy - 50 dollars and an afternoon at the US Embassy
proof of never having been married/having divorced if having been married - 50 dollars and an afternoon at the US Embassy

In Belgium, the birth certificate is the record of your life. All marriages, divorces and other life events are inscribed on this document. This is why they request it, even though in the US, the birth certificate is nothing more than what the title reveals.

The procedure is similar though not necessarily the same in the 19 communes found in Brussels. To get the specifics of how to get married in your commune, go to the relevant site listed below. All are available in French or Dutch - if you prefer English, you will have to google translate the site. I'm married to a Frankophone so I tend to use the French version of the sites.

Marriage in Saint-Gilles/Sint-Gillis - call 02/536.02.50 or visit place Van Meenen 39, door 11, and speak to Doltza Sanchez-Pardo
Marriage in Sainte Josse/Sint Joost - email etatcivil@stjosse.irisnet.be, or call 02 220 26 21 or visit Avenue de l’Astronomie 12 between 8.30 and 13.00 Monday through Friday
Marriage in Evere - call 02 247 62 50 or visit the Masion Communal between 8.00 and 12.45 Monday through Friday, or email population@evere.irisnet.be
Marriage in Schaerbeck/Schaarbeck - call 02/244 70 18 or visit office 18 at the Hotel Communal between 8.00 and 13.00 Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday (on Thursdays, visit between 8.00 and 19.00) - you can also make your demand via the web
Marriage in Woluwe Sainte Lambert/Sint Lambrechts - contact N. Vanhoudenhoven at 02.761.29.15, or ask for an Act of Marriage, or visit preferably between 8.00 and 11.30 or 13.30 and 15.00 Monday through Friday (don't know where - couldn't find an address easily)
Marriage in Sainte Pierre/Sint Pieters Woluwe - visit the Etat Civil window on the ground floor of Avenue Charles Thielemans 93between 8.00 and 16.45 Monday through Friday
Marriage in Ixelles/Elsene - call 02.515.66.89 or 93, or visit window 16 at chaussée d'Ixelles, 168, between 8.00 and 12.15 Monday through Friday
Marriage in Auderghem/Oudergem - visit the ground floor of rue Emile Idiers, 12, or call 02/676.48.92 Monday through Friday between 8.30 and 12.45
Marriage in the commune of Brussels/Bruxelles - visit the window marked 'Service Etat Civil / Mariage' on the fourth floor of Boulevard Anspach, 6, or call 02 279 34 40 Monday through Friday 8.30 to 12.00. And good luck to you. Brussel's largest Communal house (maison de commune) is not unlike a poorly organised refugee camp.
Marriage in Watermael-Boitsfort/Watermaal-Bosvoorde - Call 02.674.74.18 or 02.674.75.12, or visit Window 7 on the ground floor of Rue du Buis 57, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday between 8.00 and 12.00 or Thursday between 7.00 and 13.00
Marriage in Uccle/Ukkel - call 02/348.67.65 or visit place Jean Vander Elst, 29, between 8.30 and 15.00 Monday through Friday
Marriage in Vorst/Forest - call 02 370 22 51 or 53, speak to Betty Moens if possible, or visit Rue du Curé, 2 between 8.30 and 12.45 between Monday and Thursday, or between 8.30 and 11.45 Friday
Marriage in Anderlecht - contact Louisette Crabbe at 02 800 07 97 or 02 800 07 98, or visit Place du Conseil, 1, Monday through Friday between 8.30 and 14.00
Marriage in Molenbeek - Charmingly, this commune pairs a sub-site labeled 'I want to get married' with 'I want to get divorced'. The two services are related, so, if you want to get married, call 02 412 36 75 or visit Rue du Niveau, 7 (1st floor) between 7.45 and 12.00 Monday through Friday. If you want to get divorced, go to the second floor.
Marriage in Koekelberg - email the Koekelberg's official collaborateurs Claudine Lopez or Anita Van den Troost or visit window 1 whenever it is open and wherever it is located (this is not obvious to me on the website)
Marriage in Sint-Agatha-Bercham/Berchem-Sainte-Agathe - Call 02/464.04.14 or visit Av. du Roi Albert 33 between 9.00 and 14.00 Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, and Thursday or between 8.00 and 13.00 Friday
Marriage in Ganshoren - Call 02/464.05.12/13/23 or visit - the best time to visit is between 8 and 11 in the morning or 13.00 and 14.00 in the afternoon on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday
Marriage in Jette - On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday, visit window C, D, E, or F at chaussée de Wemmel 100 between 8.30 and 14.00 to discuss in person
Marriage in Etterbeek - call 02/627 24 69 or visit the first floor of Avenue d'Auderghem, 113-115, between 8.00 and 12.30 Monday through Friday

Shopping in Belgium

2011-05-17T14:14:00.000-07:00

In Belgium, it's up to the buyer to be the expert in what they are purchasing.

Never never never never never trust the company to sell you what you need.

Always always always check to ensure that you are buying what you want and not what they want to sell you.

To be sure, this is not the case for all Belgian businesses. The smaller and/or the newer the Belgian business, the more customer-service savvy the business will be. Belgian entrepreneurs are some of the world's leaders in, for example, IT services and products. To find out more about wonderful Belgian customer service, go to the Belgian Beta Group - these guys give you exactly what you need, and then they throw in some extras you always wanted but never thought to ask for.

But these are the young, mobile Belgian companies that operate in more than one country. If you're getting a service or a product from a Belgian behemoth that dies at the national border, you're on your own.

First, a cautionary - and true - tale.

A couple (a Brit plus a Belgian) wanted to buy an apartment in Brussels. They found a place that they liked, hired a notary, hired a second notary as a back-up, took out a loan - the couple did all the things one must do to purchase an apartment in Belgium.

The day that the couple was to sign the final contract, they reviewed the paperwork. The paperwork had already been checked by the bank, by the two notaries, and by the individual representing the co-op selling the apartment. The couple was excited to finally close the deal.

Only they didn't.

Because the notaries, the bank, and the salesman had mixed up apartments. The couple noticed that the contract was for the wrong apartment - an apartment that was for sale, yes, and an apartment that was on the same street as the apartment that they wanted, but not the apartment that they wanted.

Woops. Good thing they noticed.

If there is one task that I abhor in Belgium, it's shopping for a few key products and services overseen by some of Belgium's more notorious monopolies. In my native, capitalist country, there are a million different options and a thousand different competitors racing to provide the consumer with better, cheaper, and more customized options.

In Belgium, there is often only the one option.

Oh they dress it up with subsidiaries and separate branches and other tax-evasive schemes, but there really are very limited options in Belgium when it comes to life's 'necessary' services. You see, Belgium has historically been ruled by monopolies - one per service sector. From connecting you to the internet to putting cash into the ATM machines, from laying cable to highway construction, there is only one central, evil office making the pivotal decisions.

Monopolies traditionally destroy or absorb any attempt at competition. The resulting lack of competition in Belgium means that when you go into a Belgian store to buy a necessary service, such as internet, you won't get a knowledgeable salesman anxious to interview you and assess your needs and then sell you your 'just right' option. This is not the USA, where the customer is always right, and where if the store doesn't have exactly what you need, they'll recommend a competitor that does.

In Belgium, the salesman (and it's usually a man) sells. He doesn't know what he sells and he doesn't care - there are only so many options and they all lead back to the same supplier. The sales process is a mere formality that the customer is subjected to in order to create the illusion that the customer is an active participant in the purchase.

For this reason, any purchase in Belgium requires research. As a consumer, when you order windows, don't just assume that the window supplier will ask you about the kind of glass you want, the size, the framing, the energy-saving options, the possible decorations, etc. The supplier will most likely grab whatever windows are lying around in the store room and show up one day (he won't tell you when) and install these windows. He feels no obligation to include you in the selection of your windows.

For this reason, you have to be a proactive consumer. Be a maven. For example, when buying windows, you be the windows expert. Ask your Belgian supplier for a specific size, color, glass. Google to find out the exact steps involved in picking windows - there are loads of corporate-sponsored American websites covering just this sort of thing. Demand exactly what you want from the Belgian windows supplier. Demand exactly what you want in writing and document that the Belgian windows supplier has acknowledged your preferences. Then when he shows up with what he had in his storeroom, you can send him back to get you what you ordered (these are YOUR windows, after all) and you won't have to pay him extra.

Another byproduct of Belgium's historical monopolies is compartmentalization. In Belgium, one expert doesn't always think about how his expertise impacts another expert's expertise. In Belgium, the left hand does not know (nor care) what the right hand is doing (and vice versa).

For example, if you're getting a new kitchen, you need to be both a kitchen expert and an electricity expert. The Belgian construction crew putting in your new kitchen might not necessarily think about how your new myriad of electronic products will effect your house's electrical wiring that dates back to the 1930s. I heard a horror story of a family that got a completely new American kitchen only to turn on the oven and have the entire house black out. When the family called their Belgian kitchen crew, the crew told the family that it was not the kitchen crew's responsibility to check that sort of thing. The family had to hire a Belgian electrical crew to redo all the wiring in the house.

Just remember, in Belgium, when it comes to certain services, the experts are us, the consumers. We have to be vigilant, and we have to be insistent or we'll never get what we want - only what they sell us.

More on what you can do to enforce your rights as a consumer in Belgium here.

Still no government

2011-05-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

'L'Union fait la force - Eendracht maakt macht'

Belgium's two main mottos say it all. Strength in unity. Divided by language.

In Belgium, we've gone now for 321 days now with no federal government. And we're none the worse for wear. Since mid-February, when Belgium broke the world record for the length of time that a country has existed without a national government, those of us living in Belgium have received
free fries for everyone (in Leuven)
free beer for everyone (in Louvain-la-Neuve)
promises not to shave until Belgium gets a government (in Wallonie)
promises not to have sex till Belgium gets a government (these last two could be related-kidding. The promise was not to shave facial hair. What dirty minds you people have...)

None of these events have worked as a means of encouraging any sort of federal government (though they certainly were a lot of fun - except for the sex idea, which never really got off the ground).

Since the New Flemish Alliance became the largest political party and the (at best) tenuous relationship between the Flemish speakers and French speakers in the federal government shut down (again), Belgium has been functioning, well, as usual.

Excluding the Belgians working at the national level, the rest of the Belgians have found the lack of government to be at best another national quirk - one worth celebrating with free beer and fries and one or two weeks of razor-free mornings. In fact, I just got my tax demands from the national government, so it's apparent were still paying these quirky politicians despite their standoff. (Hey, that's a protest that just might work. Refuse to pay the non-existant government. See if they show up to work to find out why their salaries didn't arrive.)

To be honest, the Belgians don't need a government. They've developed regionally-based networks and traditions that bind them together more tightly than any political policy could hope to. While their linguistically national politicians have spent years antagonizing the different language groups, the Belgians have managed to evolve a country that eludes both anarchy and state control.

I'm not saying that there isn't a certain amount of animosity between inhabitants of the smaller, more densely populated Flanders and the larger, more rural Wallonie. The Belgian politicians have succeeded in promoting this division (most likely as a means of regularly collapsing the federal government and then going on extended holidays). And it can be rather shocking to a politically correct American to hear small, French-speaking children disparage what their teacher apparently calls "zat 'orrible lan-gwage" or hear a Flemish speaker holler about the "lazy Walloons sucking up taxpayers' money and refusing to learn Flemish".

Really though, most literate Belgians know all the money in Belgium comes from Brussels, where both Flandrians and Wallons work surprisingly long hours for a myriad of private and public organisations, where their linguistic divide is mute because everyone speaks English (which is good for me).

Like the USA, Belgium is in many ways just a very regional country - something Americans can understand. In Belgium, there are rivalries between cities (Ghent versus Antwerp), between regions (Flanders vs. Wallonie), and between cities and regions (Brussels vs. everybody else). This type of regional narcissism comes naturally to an American. The South versus the North, Pittsburgh vs. Philadelphia, NoCal vs. SoCal, Texas vs. the world (as the USA is just too small for the Texans to take on), New York City vs. the rest of New York State...the list goes on and on. In the US, we have a federal government and we need it on a national level (we do tend to fight the occasional war), but on a local level, it's not got the impact with which we sometimes credit it. The federal government of the USA can sometimes be a bit of a tootsie roll pop - hard on the outside but something of a gooey melted mess on the inside.

What mystifies the American is that the narcissism in Belgium ends at the local border. Ghent doesn't care to share its local delights with the stuck-up Antwerp(s) and Flanders is not overly-anxious to be involved in improving Wallonie (nor the other way round). In the USA we tend to believe that everyone else in our country (and possibly the world) has the potential if not the obligation to learn how to re-make themselves in our image. Aside from possibly cities like New York, where locals get off on their city's cult-like status, most Americans tend to think that the country would be better off if if everyone else would just look up to and learn from them. From this sense of egotistical outreach, we have developed our national identity.

Ah, if only the Belgians could do the same...

Brussels Citizens University

2010-09-14T11:57:00.000-07:00

Brussels Citizens University (1-3/10/2010): Where is Brussels heading?

Organised by Aula Magna, with the support of ULB, VUB and FUSL

As a region, Brussels is central in the negotiations about reforming the state, but it is also a metropolis that is growing demographically and economically. After all, Brussels is a plural capital. Its triple dimension as a city, region and capital presents Brussels with extremely complex challenges.

With reference to the States General of 2009, Aula Magna invites everyone from Brussels - experts, business leaders, politicians, associations and regular citizens – to think and debate about their metropolitan region. Aula Magna is a think-and-do-tank.

Everyone that has ideas for Brussels, works to develop and govern Brussels or that loves Brussels, is invited to participate in attempted collective and inclusive intelligence. Looking for pragmatic solutions, departing from well-trodden paths, forging new coalitions to further develop the city, breaking taboos: it is all on the programme of the ‘Citizens University’ during several sessions and workshops that will take place from 1 to 3 October 2010.

More than 100 speakers and numerous organisations from different horizons in Brussels will share their vision, experience and projects with you in several workshops, debates and meetings areas. We hope to see you there.

‘Brussels Citizens University’ will take place on the grounds of the ULB and the VUB. It will consist of three plenary and 11 parallel sessions.

More info: www.aula-magna.eu

Buying property in Belgium - how to buy a house, how buy an appartment in Belgium

2010-08-10T14:28:00.000-07:00

Purchasing property in Belgium is a commitment.

A purchased property with a mortgage that is sold within five years of purchase carries a heavy capital gains tax. There are several layers of paperwork in buying a property and all of them cost. Overall, transfer fees add an average of 15 to 20 percent to the cost of the property. New or highly renovated properties carry a VAT tax of 21 percent upon purchase. Buyers have to be extra careful in determining what they are buying as, once the contract is signed, the buyer is responsible for paying for most 'misunderstandings' experienced after a sale - from the incorrect assessment of the property's value to 'newly' discovered problems in the property's infrastructure. There are also a number of inheritance and ownership laws that determine how a property purchased is disposed of depending upon the legal and civil status (married versus cohabitation) of the individuals involved in the sale.

That said, as with many purchases in Belgium, its easy enough to commit to a purchase plan (that is then almost impossible to break). To purchase property in Belgium, all you need is a Belgian bank account and a legal residence permit (red or green identity card, good for a year or good for five years is all right). You may also be asked for a copy of your work contract - a CDI, contract indeterminee or a permanent contract, is best. Your bank can help you set up your mortgage. The Belgian mortgage system (Hypothecair Krediet/Crédit Hypothécaire) has a good reputation for ensuring affordable mortgages for buyers.

The monthly mortgage for purchasing a property in Belgium cannot be more than about a third of your monthly income. In some cases, it is cheaper to pay the monthly mortgage than to pay rent, leading many in Belgium to buy rather than rent an apartment or a house. Most Belgians prefer to buy rather than rent.

The purchase

1. Look for the à vendre/te koop signs in windows. Visit real estate agencies and pick up any of the multitude of free pamphlets and brochures describing properties available for purchase.

2. Engage a real estate agent. The listed price for any property for sale in Belgium is negotiable. An official Belgian real estate agent is a member of the Professional Institute of Real Estate Agents (Beroepsinstituut van Vastgoedmakelaars/Institut des Professions Immobilières – BIV/IPI). Real estate agents usually receive a 3 percent fee (plus VAT) paid by the seller on any property sold. Real estate agents are regionally and often linguistically bound to certain properties. For example, Zaventem buyers and thus their real estate agents will not sell to anyone who is not a Dutch speaker or not currently enrolled in a Dutch language class - this fact may be illegal, but that doesn't make it untrue.

3. Find an interesting property or two.

4. Some sellers ask buyers to sign a 'commitment to buy' (Koopintenties or Aankoopaanbod/Offre d'achat). This means that the buyer is committed. The seller is not committed. If the buyer backs out of a purchase after signing the 'commitment to buy', the buyer loses any fees paid to reserve the property. The buyer can take an option of buying the house without signing a 'commitment to buy' if the seller agrees.

5. The 'purchase agreement' (Verkoopcompromis/compromis de vente) closes the sale. This can take one to two months to complete based on the buyer's financial arrangements to pay for the property. The 'purchase agreement' can include clauses that note the sale is dependent upon the buyer receiving a mortgage, etc. Such clauses, carefully noted within the 'purchase agreement', are the only available exits to the final sale.

6. The 'purchase agreement' requires a registration fee (droit d'enregistremenr/registratierecht). Registration fees are local, 12.50% of the sale price in Brussels and Wallonia and at 10% in Flanders. There are tax incentives in certain regions that reduce this price.

7. The buyer pays a deposit on the purchase - usually five to 10 percent of the overall price of the property. The deposit is blocked from both buyer and seller until a notarised deed of sale (notariële akte/acte notarié) is signed and officially notarized by a Belgian notary. Calculate the fee of a notary at Notaire.be.

8. Within four months of the original purchase agreement, both buyer and seller must sign the official deed of sale.

9. Purchasing properties in certain regions may require official documentation or registration, anything from a soil sample to a third party verification of the size of the property.
(Sometimes sellers 'estimate' the size of the property and these estimations, if incorrect, can unfairly impact a purchase price. Imagine paying for 300 meters squared to only discover upon moving in that you have 260 meters squared. Not a nice surprise.)

Buyer Beware
Mortgage companies usually require an Expert Valuer to review the property before determining the mortgage. The mortgage company's Expert Valuer, while paid for by the buyer, does not assess the building for any potential problems or concerns. The mortgage company's Expert Valuer looks after the mortgage company and not the buyer, assessing the property for the cost of forced sale or replacement. As a buyer, get your own Expert Valuer and building professional to assess the value of the property. An unwary buyer in Belgium can end up with a property that unexpectedly requires reconstruction because the buyer did not have the property independently assessed by a professional. A recommended independent Expert Valuer association is Federation of Independent Expert Surveyors at Brusselsesteenweg 65/1, 1500 Halle, telephone number 02 356 81 07.

Resolving problems with the contract post-sale
It is possible to note in a purchase agreement that any problems discovered by buyer or seller will avoid the expense of a court battle and go into Arbitration (available in English) via the Chambre d'Arbitrage et de Médiation.

Start a Business in Belgium

2010-07-18T13:35:00.000-07:00

Image from betterthangettingby.com

A post in response to some questions about business in Belgium that I've got via email:

Belgium has a number of avenues available for those looking to start a business. Belgium is the political capital of the economic union of Europe—the European Union (EU)—and thus a gateway for non-EU citizens looking to target an EU audience.

Step 1
First, an entrepreneur must select the type of business that suits his product or service best. In Belgium, companies fall into one of nine categories:

Public limited company (ending in SA/NV)
Limited liability company (ending in BVBA/SPRL)
One-person private limited company (EBVBA/SPRLU)
Cooperative company with a limited liability (CVBA/SCRL)
Cooperative company with an unlimited liability (CVOA/SCRI)
General Partnership (Comm VA/SNC)
Limited partnership (Comm V/SCS)
Non-stock Corporation
Charity/Company established for social purposes (VZW/ASBL)

Circumvent step 1 if you will be the sole worker for your business by applying for a professional card with the Federal Service for the Economy. You'll need a registration card from your Belgian commune, a CV [which needs to be very clear and list all your professional education and experience as well as university], passport or residence permit, proof of education and FBI background check.

Step 2
An individual who wants to work as an independent can circumvent the above and apply for a professional card. To do so, he or she needs a registration form from his or her local Belgian commune (neighborhood), a CV, a photocopy of a passport or residence permit, a medical certificate, an official copy of one’s university level diploma and a certificate of good conduct from one’s former country of residence – for Americans this is a background check signed by the FBI. Submit these documents to the Federal Service for the Economy for investigation (at WTC III, Boulevard Simon Bolivar 30, 1000 Brussels). If the application is approved, the Federal Public Service can issue a professional card valid for up to five years, allowing the individual to perform the services described in the professional card.

Step 3
A business in Belgium needs to first open an account with a bank. This account officially belongs to the business and must be used in all official business transactions. It must appear on all the financial documents of the business.

Step 4
The entrepreneur must then go to a Public business coordination center (ondernemingsloketen or guichet d’enterprise). There, the entrepreneur registers with the official Belgian Register of Companies. This is a list maintained under the Belgian Federal Public Department for the Economy, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, Self-employed and Energy.

At the Public business coordination centre, the entrepreneur obtains a company number. To get a company number, the entrepreneur needs to provide the centre with personal data including his or her first and last names, gender, profession, current address, address and date of birth, nationality and identity card. Those entrepreneurs that are or have been married need to provide a marriage and divorce certificate and the first and last name of any and all spouses. The details of the proposed company must be provided to the centre, including the company name, logo, address, type of commercial activity and the date of the company’s initiation. The entrepreneur must also provide proof of his or her knowledge of management (an official education certificate or proof of verified and substantial prior management experience), a certified copy of documents describing the entrepreneur’s experience in the business sector and his or her professional capacity, the company's bank account number, and a registration fee.

Step 5
Most companies in Belgium are subject to a VAT (Value Added Tax). The VAT impacts all companies in the EU, and VAT rates vary from country to country. Belgian VAT is usually between 12 and 21 percent – high in comparison with many other EU countries. Entrepreneurs in Belgium need to register with the local VAT inspectorate in the relevant public district. The public business coordination centre can usually help the entrepreneur to do this. The VAT office requires two certified copies of the business’ articles of association and the company’s memorandum. Should any changes be made to these documents during the lifetime of the company, two certified copies of any changes must also be submitted to the VAT office.

Step 6
Within 90 days of initiation, businesses and self-employed professionals must register with a social security fund and a health fund in Belgium.

Step 7
For Public limited companies or One-person private limited companies and limited liability companies, Belgium requires that the business founders submit a 2 year financial plan to a notary to cover any potential liability.

Step 8
Engaging staff for a company in Belgium requires a company to fulfill a number of obligations including registering for social security at the National Office for Social Security, registering with a local family allowances fund, joining an accident prevention and protection at work organization, creating an internal accident prevention and protection at work department, and taking out additional insurance.

Step 9
There is public aid set up for supporting new businesses in Belgium. The Participation Fund is meant to help small and medium-sized businesses and the self-employed through the Starteo loan, the Optimeo loan, the start-up loan and the joint loan. These loans are not exclusive to Belgians or EU citizens, but they do require a due diligence procedure verifying the business seeking the loan.
Skill

Just to review, you'll need

Birth certificate
National identity card or passport
Education certificate and/or college diploma
Proof of management capabilities
Commercial bank account
Proof of non-criminal background from your last country of residence (for people from the U.S., a certified FBI background check will do)

Is the EU a brand?

2010-06-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

This weekend a German woman told me, "I pay 200 euros a month in taxes to the European Union, and outside of (expletive)-ing with the euro, I can't tell you what it does."

Lack of clarity and consistency in communication between government and citizen is a bit dangerous. When a government fails to communicate, the message to its citizens becomes 'We don't need your input ... but give us money'.

And in action and deed the EU is a government. Which is, perhaps, part of the problem. All too often, the EU markets itself like a brand - an inconsistent brand. And the EU is NOT a brand anymore than the Spanish or German government is a brand. The EU is a fact of European life.

I understand, I think, why the EU wants to market itself as a brand. Brands have visibility. Brands have clarity. People recognize a brand and they understand what a brand stands for: Nike = Sport. Oxfam= Responsibility. Britta = clean water. EU = Europe. Brand EU makes the EU sound clear and simple.

But a brand's identity and slogan can be simple and consistent. Brands are pretty one dimensional (Maxwell House = coffee).

Governments, however, are not one-dimensional. And, if a government is too consistent, it is probably a dictatorship (Berlusconi = Italia?).

The EU is not a brand. The EU is a government, a complex public entity that represents the needs and desires of a large and inconsistent population. Fortunately, the EU doesn't have to sell itself. Millions of Europeans wake up every day as Europeans. Most of these Europeans didn't choose to purchase their EU citizenship. Taxes are not a choice (despite what the Swiss think).

Taxes are, however, an investment. Perhaps rather than trying to sell itself as a nice idea, the EU needs to realize that, for good or bad, it has been bought. There is no room for buyer's remorse.

Instead, the EU needs to start selling policies. It needs to give the Europeans a say in how European money is spent, and it needs to invest in communicating why the EU funds certain policies using the money that the EU receives from the European population. This type of communication will help to eliminate the sense of impotency and indifference that many Europeans feel when it comes to the EU. If the EU were to inform rather than evade Europeans when it comes to EU policy debate - if the EU were to structure European discussions about EU issues rather than try to make Europeans just feel good about European concepts - the EU institutions will cease to be a somewhat obscure brand and will become instead a living, interactive investment that Europeans couldn't afford to ignore.

(It would be better still if the EU were to give Europeans more direct control over at least some EU policy, but this still seems to be a bit of a far-off dream.)

The EU and the European citizen's perspective

2010-06-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

The EU has an image problem.

The EU is criticized by some communication experts for being too distant, too top-down, too old (too old-fashioned that is) and too touchy when it comes to external criticism (a person is either with us or against us - which US political leader does this phrase bring to mind?).

I'm slightly less critical. I like to think of the EU as acting like the Windows operating system made for mobile phone applications when it should be acting like a government.

I'll explain.

Operating systems for mobile phones
There are a number of web OS (operating systems) like Windows and Google that create apps for mobile devices. Yet Apple is without question the most successful OS when it comes to the perspective of the individuals that use mobile devices.

This is for two reasons: One, Apple offers centralization: a central platform where any developer can create or 'write' an iPhone application. Two, Apple offers a clear network: a developer using the Apple platform can immediately make his or her application available to people using any Apple product, like the iPhone.

Most other OS create applications for the GSM or mobile device companies themselves. These phone companies then get to choose when and how to provide the app (application) to their customers. Owners of different mobile devices may or may not receive an application or an application update. Worse, when a person changes phones, she or he may or may not even get to keep an application that they used before. The person may have to purchase a new application that does the same thing but uses a different set of keys and commands - forcing the person to re-learn the old app.

The EU
The EU wants to reach European citizens directly. However, like the Windows OS relies on phone companies too often to distribute an app, the EU too often depends upon Member States to define and explain European law to individual Europeans.

This isn't necessarily always wrong - it is important to respect the sovereignty of the Member States. Each Member State has established ways of working and living that the Member State's citizens recognize and (usually) appreciate. It would be impossible (and unethical) for the EU to try to breach the trust built up between nation and citizen over several centuries. Nations are not unlike mobile device companies - both nations and mobile device companies build up a trusted brand through providing a set of services (national rights or customer privileges) and obligations (taxes or fees) between users (citizens or customers) and providers (State or company).

Luckily, unlike Apple and Windows, the EU is not in competition with the Member States as a citizenship service provider. Quite the contrary, in fact. European citizenship is a commodity unto itself - EU citizenship does not detract from or alter national citizenship in any way. And, as the multitude of individuals practicing dual citizenship throughout the world demonstrate, where it might seem silly to have two cell phones, it is not impractical to have two types of citizenship. One can often enhance the other, with one citizenship providing service in a situation where another citizenship is not accessible - think of all the European travelers seeking support and aid when trapped in foreign countries during the volcano eruptions. EU citizenship stepped in where national citizenship was limited by geographic boundaries. Alternatively, EU rights are far less developed and specific than most national laws of the different Member States, which are used each and every day by EU Member State citizens.

If the EU is going to avoid acting like a 'benevolent dictatorship', it needs to be more directly accessible (and more accountable) to individual European citizens. The EU needs to cultivate itself as a separate and equally powerful set of personal rights and responsibilities for the European citizen, not a forum where Member State political leaders meet and trade national-level influence. The EU can best do this through recognizing and speaking to active European citizens - for example, business owners and employees that work in more than one of the 27 EU Member States, students and teachers studying or traveling throughout the EU (and outside of it), law enforcement and other public officials working with international issues like immigration or international crime, European tourists and travel agencies, European journalists working throughout the EU or outside Europe - these groups include European citizens that will regularly access and use their European rights once they understand these rights.

The EU is not in competition to provide services already offered by the EU Member States. The EU is out to supplement and coordinate these services for the EU citizens that travel and work among the different Member States and outside the EU itself. Once this is clear and concrete (accessible) for the European citizens in need of the EU's services, the EU will be a lot more popular - not unlike Apple.

The EU could learn from Facebook

2010-05-24T03:24:00.000-07:00

They can criticize Facebook all they want. But EU bureaucrats and the EU could benefit from thinking more like Facebook and less like a top-heavy treaty organization.

First, be user-driven. Facebook develops and innovates for its users and responds quickly to its users’ criticism (though not always in a way that stops that criticism). Facebook does not try to reproduce its internal organization online – an impossible task. Instead, Facebook’s internal organization is constantly evolving according to the needs of the Facebook community.

Second, be accessible. Despite being an enormous supra-national organization, the EU does not seem to have sufficient personnel to respond to the growing number of queries voiced by national and regional legislators, politicians, not to mention European citizens. Why not, like Facebook, create open, public platforms where citizens can publically report bugs, ask questions, discuss how to do different things with each other, share opinions and ask for new applications?

Third, be useable (that is, user-friendly). Facebook makes it easy to navigate easy to track ideas and news that community members want to track. Outside of RSS feeds, the EU has no specific structure for tracking updates or ideas. Instead, the EU treats its online space like a library from the 1980s, a place where caretakers can archive old policies and set up stands to showcase new bestsellers. Facebook is a platform that users use to structure access to information themselves. Facebook is a user-made map to every library of interest to the platform members– a real-time user-based portal rather than a state-funded anachronism.

Fourth, don’t be afraid to be controversial, just remember to be responsive. No truly active community can exist without regularly frustrating and infuriating its members. It works like so: first, the government attempts to anticipate the needs and desires of its citizens through structuring the community. Then, as the structure becomes necessary to the community, certain politicians inevitably try to leverage the structure for some kind of personal profit. Citizens in turn use the structure to fulfill their own needs. While doing so, the citizens discover the abuses on the part of the platform’s politicians and complain in public forums. Right now there are quite a number of EU politicians leveraging the structure but not enough public forums where citizens can be heard.

Last but never least, moderate and facilitate, don’t dictate and, in the case of the EU, don’t try so hard to initiate. Citizens drive real debate and change, not bureaucrats or technocrats. The most popular and successful politicians learn to listen to what their communities are saying and respond to what’s said while its being said. Too often EU legislators create a product or service that may be necessary, but they fail to clearly link it to a current citizen concern. Instead, the product or service gets archived in the online library, where citizens can hardly find what the EU’s done for them – even when they start looking for it.

Look at the eruption over passengers’ rights. The infrastructure was there, but it wasn’t obvious. Industries and passengers panicked and people lost time and money and patience. Thankfully, EU citizens organized themselves, posting information and travel opportunities to public forums – like Facebook and Twitter.

What if instead the EU had organized forums for discussion on Europa, installing platform moderators with the policy knowledge and linguistic skills required to direct stranded citizens to where they could find clear information about their rights and the most direct means of accessing those rights given the different citizens’ locations? Indeed, such public forums might also have helped inspire (or shame) travel and transport agencies to respond appropriately to their customers’ needs. Moreover, all the discussions and information traded by travelers and industry representatives via the public forums during the crisis would have been collected. These conversations and debates could have been centrally archived for EU transport policy experts to study and use in making better policy and legislation that would better respond to the real-time needs of citizens in transit.

Well, opportunity lost is perspective gained. Right, EU?

Private data and the EU

2010-05-14T05:40:00.000-07:00

The EU is getting very concerned with protecting the private data of its citizens.

Between organising an 'Article 29' Working party to research and advise on the amount and use of private data by corporations running social media platforms (Facebook is a favourite target) and the European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx, the EU is creating an uncomfortable environment for (largely American) online platforms storing private data.

The reasons could be historical. Large corporations, institutions or governments in Europe that have collected and stored the private information of individuals have not always used this information for the betterment of the individuals. Also, European consumer regulators tend to frown on US marketing tactics that try to convince consumers that they desperately need a product that they did not know existed before the product's billion-dollar marketing campaign. (This is pretty smart - over-consumption in the USA has been linked with most of the country's problems, from obesity to the 2009 economic crisis.)

Whatever the reasons, the impact of any EU high-level action at this point is negligible. EU (and other supranational) citizens contribute private data to social and professional online platforms because the contribution brings them (a sense of) value. Whether the value is psychological or economic is irrelevant; suffice to say, people upload personal data online because they want to share it with a network (Facebook, Netlog, Nasza klasa, Bebo, LinkedIn, Xing, Tuenti...the list is monumental).

Sharing this information doesn't only bring value to the individual, it also brings value to the network. Networks thrive on information - it makes them grow in size and knowledge and it allows them to evolve and adapt communication within the network to be more efficient and more effective for network members. The EU blog-o-sphere is a perfect example. I read blogs about the EU from Norway to Italy, and I get updates on my Facebook account from Social Europe and Cafebabel (interesting) and Jerzy Buzek (less interesting). At the same time, I get Facebook and Google ads for companies that want to manage my European pension and companies that want to fly me to Budapest for 25 euros. I give information to get information to either use myself to to share with friends - friends that are interested in going to a Cafebabel event with me tomorrow night and friends that might want to escape to Budapest for a cheap vacation.

I know that sharing my private information makes me vulnerable should some low-minded group or individual decide to exploit my data (or use it out of context). However, I don't expect this. Social networks both online and offline need information to thrive but more importantly they need trust to survive. The minute that a person goes public with a story of social and personal disaster due to a social network's poor data protection (and not due to an individual's naivete in what he or she posted where or who she or he invited to be a part of his or her network), the platform risks losing members (social capital) and all the information and ideas that those members provide (financial capital).

The same would happen if a network member were to suddenly lose control of the private data he or she shared with the network. These examples represent a social network's nightmare, not their dream. They'd lose customers on all sides (network members and advertisers) and they'd be in big trouble with more than one government.

However, technology is not a field to be restrained by either morals or common sense. So it is the education of the individuals using the technology to participate in these online networks that offers the best way to mitigate any future private data disasters.

If the EU or anyone else wants to keep private data safe, they'd be well-advised to step up facilitating online network members' education of their own vulnerability. I'm not saying to stop the regulation and legal discussions about corporate responsibility occurring at higher levels of government. I am just saying that by the time these discussions result in a real rule that is capable of application in the real world, the private data discussion will probably have been solved by the network members themselves.
Let's give us the information we need to reach the best solution.

Europe Day

2010-05-09T09:39:00.000-07:00

May 9th is Europe Day.

On May 9th, 1950, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman proposed the idea of a supranational community for Europe. His idea soon became the economic union of France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands for the trade of coal and steel. The concept behind the union was that through economic integration, these countries would collaborate to create more jobs, more money and a higher standard of living for all their citizens. The union was a sort of altruistic free trade agreement, promoting both capitalism and economic collaboration between the nations. The union was to deter war and promote trade. Free trade as a substitute for national animosity.

Since then, the union has expanded to 27 Member States and 7 governing institutions. The largest of these institutions, the European Commission, which oversees the day-to-day bureaucracy of the European Union, employs more than 25.537 permanent posts and 480+ temporary posts. The next largest of the institutions, the European Parliament, which represents the European people, has more than 5.000 permanent posts and 930+ temporary posts. The Council of the European Union, which contains at least one national minister from each of the Member States, has more than 3.460 permanent posts and 30 to 40 temporary posts. The European Court of Justice, which interprets EU law and provides relevant opinions to Member State national courts and tribunals when they ask, has 1.450+ permanent posts and 430+ temporary posts.

The union is no longer about coal and steel. It is still concerned with economics, but now economics provides only a basis from which to begin to discuss union decisions. The EU is attempting to build a political community from an economic union (the 1950s 'free trade agreement'). And, despite serious setbacks, the EU is succeeding.

Overpaid they may be - and the powers that be know I'd love affordable housing in Brussels, which the EU is ruining bit by bit - but under-performing, perhaps not.

Europe is now almost a continent of independent sovereign states coordinating economic and political decisions. National agendas are aligning in key areas: education, the environment, the free movement of people, goods, and (increasingly) services within the EU. Students can travel across the EU without passports or changing money, and their academic degrees are recognized throughout the EU, meaning that a student educated in Finland can apply for a job in Austria, France, the UK... Rights for EU citizens mean that an Estonian stranded by an Italian airline in Spain can expect reparation from the travel company and that a student who's education is funded by her German government can use that money to get a degree in Romania (fantastic IT training there). The EU is setting higher standards for products and services and trying to coordinate the quality of goods found throughout the different Member States. There are initiatives on gender equality, racial equality and linguistic equality. European citizenship is increasingly valuable and only citizens of the Member States have access to it.

It's not a perfect union. Europeans across the union are frustrated with Greece and its impact on the euro. There are huge debates raging over the failing EU Fisheries policies that seek to ensure sustainable fishing in the oceans, seas and rivers that water Europe. The recent financial crisis has seen Member States cut development aid as they wait to see what kind of aid they will be forced to offer their own union members. The EU must contend with internal political stalemates, national and linguistic bickering and an arguably inflated bureaucracy with some leaders that many Euroskeptics criticize for acting like a new Euristocracy rather than the supranational public servants that they are hired to be.

But it is an ever-closer union. The EU will aid Greece, the Fisheries policy is under international review and revision and EU nations have agreed to continue to fund EU development aid to third countries. The Lisbon Treaty promises a more streamlined decision structure and, through extended Parliamentary powers and a 'Citizens' initiative', is trying to give an active European public more influence in EU decisions. The Eurocrats are coming under more scrutiny as EU citizens begin to pay more attention to decisions coming from Brussels - and many Eurocrats are anxious to prove their dedication to the EU citizen. The EU is now a forum where European countries come together to identify, discuss and debate issues and ideas.

From a small union based on coal and steel to a continent of countries that share people, places and policies - the EU definitely has something to celebrate.

What are Eurocrats paid and how does one become a Eurocrat?

2010-05-02T01:48:00.000-07:00

There is some smoldering resentment in Brussels when it comes to salary. In Belgium, salary is the result of an individual negotiation between the employee and the employer, and the truth of the salary is often a carefully guarded secret. Most people seem to suspect that they are poorly paid in comparison with a colleague – due to the nature of the Belgian business environment, the best salary package inevitably goes to the best and most well connected negotiators, and for most businesses, this is a small group into which it is difficult to be promoted.

Perhaps this is a part of why people in Brussels are often suspicious of Eurocrats. Eurocrats, exempt from the heavy Belgian national taxes, make far more money and enjoy far greater benefits than the average Belgian employee. The salaries and lifestyles of Eurocrats in Brussels make life here that much more expensive for the locals and drive a wedge between the Belgian taxpaying population and the more privilege EU population.

But what are the facts of working as a Eurocrat? As public servants whose salaries are funded by European taxpayers (such as myself), I thought that this information should not be difficult to find.

And it wasn't.

Wikipedia notes that low grade Eurocrats earn between €2,325.33 and €2,630.96 monthly, while the highest grade Eurocrat earns between €14,822.86 and €16,094.79 monthly. Eurocrats are taxed based upon ‘individual circumstances’, and thus the taxes of individual Eurocrats reportedly range between 8 percent and 45 percent of their monthly income. Eurocrat taxes do not directly benefit Belgium, save for a building tax on the institutional buildings. Instead, Eurocrat taxes go into the Community budget, the budget that the EU institutions use to fund EU activities.

In addition to salary, Eurocrats receive is an 'installation' allowance equal to one or two months' salary that is meant to cover the cost of moving to Brussels or an EU-specified location. If a Eurocrat already lives in Brussels, this installation allowance can act as just a nice hiring bonus. Eurocrats also receive pay allowances which include things like EU-subsidised private schooling for Eurocrat kids at one of the 15 highly acclaimed 'European schools' (five of which are in Belgium), a allowance for living outside one’s own country, an allowance for being the principle earner in one’s family, an allowance for covering the cost of a crèche for children not yet in school, etc. The EU also funds the expenses for Eurocrats traveling on business, providing a daily allowance to cover transportation, accommodation, and meals.

For 2 percent of their basic salary, Eurocrats can buy into an EU health insurance plan that covers 85 percent of all regular medical expenses and 100 percent of any medical costs incurred by a serious injury. The Eurocrat pension scheme requires Eurocrats to contribute 8.25 percent of their salary to the pension fund. The maximum retirement pension for a Eurocrat, awarded after 35 years of service, is 70 percent of the Eurocrat’s final basic salary.

What is required to become a Eurocrat?

To become a Eurocrat, a European citizen must have a Member State nationality. The citizen must be fluent in at least two of the 23 official EU languages. (Most Eurocrats speak English, French, or German as their first or second language.) Then the citizen must enter and pass the competition or concours put out by the EU.

In 2010, the competitions have been altered to focus more on the competencies needed by the EU. Prior to this year, competitions reportedly focused more on knowledge of the EU and its institutions. While this is still important, the competitions now want more applied skills in addition to institutional knowledge.

When a competition is published, citizens wishing to participate register with EPSO, the European Personnel Selection Office. To do so, they must first complete an online application form prior to the deadline of the competition in which they wish to participate. There is then a computer-based admission testing throughout individual EU (and some non-EU) countries, followed by an assessment stage here in Brussels.

If a candidate completes the assessment stage, he or she is placed on a reserve list that is input into an EPSO personnel database. The EU institutions use the database to find and select needed staff.

When placed on a reserve list, a candidate is highlighted for specific job profiles based upon his or her background and his or her results in the competition. The most common job profiles require candidates to re-take the relevant competition every year in order to stay on the reserve list. Less common profiles need only re-take the competition every three years. Being on the reserve list does seem to guarantee candidates at least an interview with an EU institution.

There are, of course, less conventional ways to become a Eurocrat. Earning the introduction to and then the respect of a Commissioner can earn a citizen a staff position on the Commissioner's cabinet. Once there, it is reportedly possible to pass an internal courcours that will allow the citizen to take a higher position within the EU. As in any company or international organization, this sort of insider privilege causes some friction among the Eurocrats themselves.

Eyjafjallajokull and the economics of the EU

2010-04-18T11:58:00.000-07:00

I and a special guest that has been with me for three weeks are now stranded in Brussels.

We had plans to finish his vacation in Dublin (not enough rain here in Brussels, you see). But now my week of hard-earned vacation may be spent...well, possibly back at work. If our tickets are canceled again, I'd prefer to save my vacation days to spend time in a sunny warm spot.

Like Dublin.

I am now online reading updates about air space in Bruxelles, and one rather ominous article suggests that the airspace closure could hurt the EU's recovery from the recession. The ash spewed by the Icelandic glacier Eyjafjallajokull is costing the airlines 200 million dollars a day. Something like 63,000 flights have already been canceled.

But I think the article is too quick to predict dire economic eruptions. At least within the EU, people are finding ways around air travel. Ferries, boats, cargo ships, buses, and trains are working overtime. People are using word-of-mouth and social media to collaborate on rides home. There's a Swedish Facebook page coordinating rides back to Sweden and a Twitter 'get me home' tag for hopeful hitchhikers. If anything, the volcano is proving that the euro is a triumph in fostering and facilitating this sort of pan-continental collaboration between Europeans. They can communicate, collaborate and they don't have to change the currency at every border crossing. The euro is saving the travelers and the travel companies time and money, and the unity fostered by - well by the euro, by the EU or by a more inter-connected Europe, is helping people get home or at least feel more at home despite the eruption's disruption.

The real economic troubles, of course, are not for the citizens but for the companies. If this keeps up - and the last time Eyjafjallajokull erupted, it erupted for two years, just long enough for them to name the it - if the eruption keeps up, the companies transporting material and not necessarily passengers that will suffer. Around 7,000 tons of goods are flown from Asia to Europe daily, and 4,000 tons of goods are flown from Europe to Asia. Yet these companies are already using new air routes through Southern Europe, where they can then put the goods on trains, trucks or boats for shipment throughout Europe.

I think the airlines will probably open up again in time for us to get back to watching the run up to the British elections. Already, Twitter is announcing that test flights from the UK to Ireland are proving the air is once again safe. But I'm still excited by the achievements of the last few days. The EU is doing well, I think, despite the recent frustrations for the euro.

Where I'm from

2010-03-21T03:46:00.000-07:00

I grew up in Western Kentucky and Southern Virginia, with a few years spent in rural Georgia where one of my brothers was born.

That's in the South. That's the part of the USA that most people make fun of. It's also, in my opinion, the part with the best music, the richest food, the most unique blend of cultures, and it contains neighborhoods with the some of biggest socioeconomic differences in the entire country. It's a part of the USA that few people visit. I think that this is probably because people don't go South unless they know people in the South. American Southerners do not invest much in marketing. You either know or you don't know and we're not going to waste our time educating you.

For example, I grew up next door to Mammoth Cave, which I visited regularly. Yet even today, it still surprises me that no one else seems to know about Mammoth Cave - a US national park made up of what is reported to be one of the largest networks of caverns and caves in the Americas, around 370 miles of which have been fully explored and opened to tourists. Most of these tourists are, apparently, local. Maybe its the accents, maybe its the guns, or maybe its the immense open spaces and slow-moving people that put off foreign visitors - and foreign, to an American Southerner, is anyone from further North than Richmond, Virginia, and further West than Arkansas (pronounced Arr-cain-saw).

I only mention this because I am constantly astonished at the gap between what Europeans know about the USA and what they think they know. In Brussels, I hear a lot about the USA from the media - movies, magazines, news, and what have you - and I hear a lot about 'back home' from people who are still living 'back home' in the American South. The different images that I collect in my head are, I guess, all true, but they are not at all consistent. The thing about the USA is that it is so immense, so populated, and so multiethnic and multicultural and so...changeable, that anything you say about it or its people is probably true.

I think that most of the countries in Europe could make a similar claim - heck, most of the cities. I've lived in Brussels for four years now and I know next to nothing about Brussels, and much less about Belgium. I only found out last week that the area that I call Matonge is officially the Port de Namur. Brussels oral history explains that the first few Congolese Africans who came to Brussels in the 1950s, while the Congo was still part of the Kingdom of Belgium, settled in Port de Namur. The immigrants and their neighbors renamed the area 'Matonge' in popular speech after Matonge, a section of Kinshasa, Congo, where most of the African immigrants came from. Today Matonge in Brussels is still home to a large population of African descendants and immigrants - from all over Africa, not just the Congo - as well a huge number of multinational Europeans working in and around the European Parliament, which is just behind Matonge.

Most of the Europeans living in Matonge are underpaid interns scrambling for real jobs in Brussels. I don't know much about the Africans living in the area, except that most of them speak English, French, and one or more African dialects and that most African store owners in Matonge have better prices and more convenient hours than stores in other Brussels neighborhoods.

Walking from Schuman to Schaerbeek in Brussels, I feel like I pass through several different countries. I see the Brussels that most tourists of a week or so, or even interns here for a year or so, would never know existed. Some of it is pretty and some of it is depressing - there are phenomenal Moroccan pastry shops and self-made artistic geniuses with gorgeous ateliers right next door to vacant-eyed prostitutes who are probably trafficked in from some of the worst parts of Eastern Europe.

It's Brussels. And the more I hear about it on the news, the more questions I get from friends back home and the more people that I meet in bars and cafes around my part of Brussels, Place Flagey, the more I find out that I don't know. So now I'm a lot more skeptical of what I hear about 'Brussels' and 'Belgium'. Neither the city nor the country is some static concept to be critically analyzed or regularly ridiculed. Both are complex and ever-evolving entities that will never cease to entice and irritate me.

Exactly like every city and every state where I lived back home.

EU citizenship - what it means

2010-03-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

I’m researching the different avenues to Belgian citizenship. At night, after work, in between finishing a third degree in law and learning French, I find that it is an interesting if exhausting exercise to try and sort through the Belgian nationality requirements – some simple, some less simple (usually the parts in French). I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve telephoned the Belgian free legal aid for information more than once. As soon as I’m clear in plain, simple English of the different options, I’ll start posting them here.

With Belgian EU citizenship, I would have full access to the four famous freedoms of EU citizenship – the ability of goods, capital, services, people, and labour to move freely within the EU’s internal market. Belgian EU citizenship is VIP EU citizenship – not like Polish, or worse, Bulgarian and Romanian EU citizenship. Bulgarian and Romanian EU citizenship is like being invited to come to come to the club and then being asked to pay the cover charge. Even the UK citizens, who do not use the euro, don’t have to pay the cover charge.

It’s no secret that EU citizenship is not defined by the European Union. EU citizenship is defined by the relationship between your current Member State and the Member State in which you want to be a EU citizen.

After all, it was only in May 2009 that the Polish were finally allowed to work in Belgium without obtaining a foreign worker’s VISA. (A foreign worker’s VISA, as you probably know, requires a specific salary and the official and legal sponsorship of a company that promises to hire you.)

While Polish EU citizens may finally be able to work in Belgium sans VISA, the Polish must still wait until 2011 to be able to work in Germany without special VISAs. Currently, East Germans are the only former Communists legally allowed to compete for jobs in Germany without a work permit, EU citizenship be damned. Austria practices the same rules, citing its border status as a reason to limit which EU citizens have access to what inside Austria, technically an EU Member State.

But the most obvious second-rate EU citizens are the Bulgarians and the Romanians. No employer in The Netherlands can hire a Bulgarian or a Romanian for a job unless The Netherlands-based employers can prove that there are no other Dutch or EU citizens suitable for the position. Ireland opened up to everyone at first, allowing all EU Member State citizens to compete for jobs sans VISAs. Until Ireland introduced a work permit scheme for Bulgaria and Romania in 2006.

France, a notorious Member State when it comes to obtaining citizenship or VISAs of any kind, lifted all restrictions to EU Member State citizens in 2004 except for Bulgaria and Romania. Bulgarians and Romanians can more quickly obtain VISAs if they apply for a job in a series of identified French industries in need of employees, however, the recession has drastically reduced these identified industries. Italy requires work permits from Bulgarians and Romanians UNLESS the Bulgarians and Romanians choose to work in the fields of agriculture, hotel and tourism, domestic work, care services, construction – all the cheap labour used by rich Italians – OR unless the Bulgarians and Romanians choose to work as highly paid or highly skilled managers. Basically, the Italians don’t want middle class Bulgarians or Romanians working in Italy (EU citizenship be damned). Luxembourg has a similar VISA scheme, as does the UK.

EU Member States that give equal treatment to EU citizens from all EU Member States include Portugal, Greece, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. I’m not sure how Bulgaria and Romania treat EU citizens from other Member States. Still, 14 out of 27 Member States that practice equality among all EU citizens is actually pretty good. I guess. Still, I’m glad I’m positioned for Belgian citizenship rather than Romanian or Bulgarian.

Becoming Belgian - why I'm going to

2010-03-07T00:22:00.000-08:00

As they say where I grew up, it's time to sh** or get off the pot.

That is to say, I am now officially exploring Belgian citizenship. I'll write about the options and the process here, so that anyone else thinking about it can see how it goes.

I've lived in Belgium longer than anywhere else in my so-called adult life, so its time to accept that this is one of my homes. As much as I criticize and caution, I don't dislike Belgium - the country is like any other country, self-absorbed, with any room for improvement best seen by outsiders. But any improvement to a country has got to be done by insiders, so its time for me to venture inside.

I think I've held this option in the back of my mind for so long because to become Belgian is to officially commit the country. And, while I like Brussels, it is not where I grew up, its people are not people that I understand easily, and its ways are not my ways.

I think a lot immigrants that come to Brussels have similar concerns. We arrive, spend years learning how to do things in Brussels, where to go for what, learning to accept what we have to and struggle for what we don't have to. We get to know our Communes, begin to learn the ins and outs of Belgian employment law, figure out how take care of ourselves given the constraints of Belgian daily life. And the whole time we are thinking about how we aren't from here, how we may go home...someday.

Then come the children (this is still several years in the future for me, but I've seen how it goes.) The children are put in the local creche, the children make friends and before you know it, you have bought a house, enrolled your children in a Dutch/French-speaking school and, while your kids still call your country of origin 'home' the way you do, when people ask, both you and your children say 'We're from Brussels - you know, in Belgium.'

I don't know for certain that this is the way things will go for me. First of all, while I'm not single, my beloved boyfriend and I have a lot to do before either one of us is stable enough to build anything more than castles in the sky. But I know that any real construction we plan will be much easier if I can access the array of rights provided to Belgian citizens. As in any relationship, Belgium is much more generous to the individuals that commit to her as a country rather than those that just use her for her fringe benefits.

Also, being Belgian would make me European. I work with the EU, another object of my affection and thus my constant criticism. I'm an American, now and forever, but I would like to also be a European, so that I can be an official part of what it is my work to build (Please don't think me over-confident, I know I am but a minor builder in the mammoth project that is the EU). I still believe in the EU, even if I'm a little skeptical of the Brussels bubble that the Eurocrats have built for themselves. But part of my job is to pop that bubble and, to be fair, it is the EU who is paying to have the bubble popped, and it's not easy. The EU wants more Europeans, but they don't want fewer Spanish, Italian, Polish, German, French, British, etc. They want it to be possible for people to be both a Member State national AND an EU citizen - to be inclusive rather than exclusive.

It is with that spirit that I think I'd like to be an American, a European and a Belgian.

Let's hope I can keep this spirit as I begin to negotiate the bureaucracy that any legal status in Belgium demands.

More for less

2010-02-24T21:32:00.000-08:00

Companies, customers, and policy makers in Brussels have been using the current economic crisis to justify cutbacks in spending, increasing the competition among their potential suppliers.

But much of the competition created as a result of these cutbacks emphasizes quantity and not quality: more work but less earnings, more temporary interns but fewer skilled permanent staff, more press and public announcements but less effective communication overall, more turnover and less consistency, more immediate sales but fewer long-term commitments. All in all, Brussels business has gotten downright promiscuous.

Only weeks ago, Belgian advertising and communications agencies for private firms joined together to protest this business bed-hopping. The agencies posted an online manifesto citing how their human resources and profit margins were being decimated by unfair competition. The agencies explained that this unfair competition is practiced not by their competitors but by their clients.

Too many client companies want to be wined and dined by several agencies before making any promises of profit. As a result, the agencies can barely cover their advertising assets.

Even clients in the public sector are not immune to the charms of the desperate times - public bids put out for projects have ever lower bottom lines and require increasingly provocative pre-sales investment. Public institutions and agencies are calling for more case studies, more design samples, more time and money spent on proposals rather than on commitments.

The funny thing is that an emphasis on quantity over quality is what got us into our current economic mess. We flirted with fire and we got burnt.

And apparently, we are still pretty hot.

Carnival in Binche this weekend for the 600 plus year in a row

2010-02-10T15:58:00.000-08:00

This Sunday, Binche, Belgium, will host a UNESCO-labeled Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

This Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, Binche will have its annual Carnival celebration, a tradition begun by the city in the 14th century. The website is here.

As with all Carnival celebrations, there is heavy drinking, a lot of dancing, ornate parades and loud drums and bells. Central to the celebration in Binche however, are the Gilles. There are 1000 Gilles each year at the Binche carnivals. The Gilles are characters - usually male - dressed in wax masks and wooden clogs. The Gilles can be as young as three or as old as - well, how old is the oldest man in Binche? In the afternoon, the Gilles wear huge headdresses made of ostrich feathers as they parade through the city pelting the crowds with oranges. It's a great honor to be selected as a Gilles, and your responsibility as such is to make a lot of noise to scare off winter.

If you go to Carnival in Binche, take the train because you will never find parking in the city. A train leaves from Brussels to Binche ten minutes after the hour every hour Sunday beginning at six am. The ride takes about an hour, and a train ticket shouldn't cost more than five to eight euros - less if you take a weekend ticket or a ticket spanning several days.

Or, if you do find parking, settle in to enjoy the festival because you won't be able to make it out of the city until the last Carnival beer is drained.

The new Bussels Metro Tram and bus card

2010-02-09T08:14:00.000-08:00

Change your card! Or, if you don't have one, get a card or get a bike because free-loading is no longer an option this summer....

The STIB, the Brussels public transportation office, is putting up access barriers in all metro stations. As of summer 2010, you will not be able to pass through a metro barrier, tram door, or bus door without inserting your ticket or waving your MOBIB card in front of a card reader.

If you have a monthly subscription for Brussels public transport, you need to change it by the 30th of March into a MOBIB card. Go to a BOOTIK point with 5 Euros and a passport picture and fill out the application form.

Or use the online procedure: http://www.stib.be/bootik-online.html?l=en

The Belgian office for foreigners who live in Belgium

2010-02-03T21:34:00.000-08:00

For information about your 'Civil State', including everything from specific details about how someone from your country needs to apply for Belgian citizenship to a VISA, call the

Service Public Fédéral Etrangères Etat - Civil
Rue des Petits Carmes, 27
1000 Bruxelles
Telephone: 02/501.87.85 or 02/501.89.00

Call Monday to Friday between the hours of 9.00 and 12.30 in the morning or between the hours of 13.30 and 15.30 in the afternoon.

Six steps (and five years) to Belgian citizenship

2010-01-31T13:49:00.000-08:00

A colleague has applied for Belgian nationality. The colleague has kindly agreed to share the journey to Belgian citizenship with me for my blog.

Before we begin, I’d like to point out that while natural Belgians are not permitted dual citizenship, naturalised Belgians are not required to give up their original citizenship when they apply for Belgian citizenship. So you can be first a British citizen and then also a Belgian citizen. However, you cannot be first a Belgian citizen and then also become a British citizen. Also, for questions specific to the rules for your nationality when applying for Belgian citizenship, call the Service Public Fédéral Etrangères Etat - Civil for answers. I've posted their information here.

First, to apply for Belgian nationality, you have to have lived in Belgium for three years. This means that you must have been legally registered as a resident at a Belgian Commune for three years. From the moment you submit a fully completed application, it takes the Belgian state two years to process and either accept or reject your application for citizenship.

Second, go to your Commune. Ask for a stamped copy of your identification card and a stamped printed list of all the residences in which you have lived since entering Belgium. The printed and the copy of your ID cost you nothing. But each official stamp costs 8.50 euros—17.00 euros total for the two official documents.
Note: These are not federal stamps. These are Commune stamps. A federal stamp would cost you, and Belgian citizenship is free for those individuals that are eligible when they apply. The Commune, however, makes you pay for Belgian citizenship.

Third, pick up the official form of application for Belgian citizenship. In Ixelles, you can get this official form at a Commune office located near the Commune’s change of address office. This application is huge – it is full of detailed questions, including listing every single immediate family member and their place and date of birth. A final question demands that you give a clear reason as to why you want Belgian citizenship. At the top of the form, there is a statement declaring loyalty and love for the Belgian state, its King, and its various governments. Copy this declaration in your handwriting and sign.

Fourth, get an original of your birth certificate translated by an official translator – a Traducteur Assermente. Someone at the Commune will have or will be able to email a list of official translators with offices in Brussels. You can also fill out this questionnaire to find an appropriate translator. For my fellow Ixellois, there is an official translator located on Place Flagey who translates English or Arabic into Belgian French. The official translation of a birth certificate costs 35 euros – make sure the translator gives the certificate the official stamp.
Note: For North American and (most) EU applicants, there is no need to have your country of origin ‘officialise’ your birth certificate when you apply for Belgian citizenship. Applicants from certain other countries, however, may be asked to ‘officialise’ their birth certificate via official bureaucrats their countries of origin. Call or speak to your country of origin officials to see if this is necessary—the Commune official don’t know and tend to assume everybody is required to officialise their birth certificate in their country of origin.

Fifth, You need to take the officially translated birth certificate and the original birth certificate to the Palais de Justice to a Greffe (a sort of almost-lawyer). From the Greffe, your translated birth certificate will receive yet another official stamp.
Note: Timing is, as ever, important in Brussels. The Greffe at the Palais de Justice is only open at specific hours. You have to leave your translated birth certificate (with the official translator stamp) with the Greffe, who will tell you when you can pick it up – usually during normal working hours. In Brussels, the Palais de Justice is located next to the Louise Metro stop.

Six, you now submit your application to the Chambre des Representants, located at the Boulevard de Région 35, open between 9.00 and 12.30 or 14.00 and 17.00. Remember, your full citizen application needs to include:

Your printed list of legal Belgian residencies (with the official Commune stamp)
The official photocopy of your Belgian identification cared (with the official Commune stamp)
Your real birth certificate
Your official translation of your birth certificate (with the official stamp from the Traducteur Assermente AND the official stamp from the Palais de Justice)
Your completed citizen application form

Up to the date of submission of the complete application to the Chambre des Representants, the whole process will cost you

8.50 euros for the official Commune stamp on your printed list of Belgian residencies
8.50 euros for your official Commune stamp on your photocopy of your Belgian identification card
35 euros for your officially translated birth certificate, complete with the official Traducteur Assermente stamp
travel expenses

Upon submitting the completed application, you are informed that it will take the Belgian state two years to consider your application. However, you will receive an official dossier number in a registered letter within two weeks. If you are not home to sign for the letter, the letter will go to the official post office to await your signature and pick-up.

More about naturalisation in French here.

EuroVillage announcement

2010-01-26T08:02:00.001-08:00

GRAND OPENING Euro Village Place Luxembourg

Friday 29th January

Euro Village goes to Quartier Leopold in Place Luxembourg !!!

Euro Village, the meeting point of the International Community in Brussels, after Place Chatelain moves to Quartier Leopold in Place Luxembourg. Quartier Leopold is a stylish Brasserie of 450m2 with two beautiful terraces (one in fornt and the other at the back).

The aim of EuroVillage concept is to allow all of you to discover or re discover the most beautiful areas of « our Capital city » : Place Chatelain one Wednesday a month, and now one Friday a month, Place Luxembourg !!!! We believe Quartier Léopold is certainly the best place where to end your week in style, meet up with friends and colleagues after work as from 17h30 and the entrance is for FREE!

This will be a MONTHLY NOT TO BE MISSED « DATE » offering drinks at fair prices and the possibility to eat delicious Home made Tapas or have dinner !

Euro Village offers music by our resident DJ Jonathan Loys.

SEE YOU @ The Euro Village Luxembourg Grand Opening on this FRIDAY 29th January as from 18h30.

Quartier Léopold : Place du Luxembourg 9 - 1050 Brussels

New Year and new EU order

2010-01-07T21:27:00.001-08:00

We’ve got a new Commission and a new Council President in the EU.

The Council President is a former Belgian Prime Minister, meaning that Belgium has new leadership as well. Yves Leterme, the former Belgian PM who tried to resign twice – first during yet another political French vs. Flemish crisis in 2007 and then again during the inception of the financial crisis, when Benelux Fortis was sold to BNP Paribus Bank in 2009 - this same man will now lead Belgium yet again in what one can only assume is a reluctant comeback.

Leadership is more a concept than a commitment at the European level, a characteristic that is in keeping with our own Belgian political parties. In selecting their most high-profile figures, the EU tends to go with internal intelligence rather than external recognition. Lady Ashton, possessing the most senior foreign policy position within the EU, has less experience in her field than many other candidates that expressed interest in the position, but she is well-liked as a Commission liaison to the European Parliament, newly powerful under the Lisbon Treaty. At the same time, the most public EU figure, the new Council President van Rumpuy, is an EU insider that formerly ran Belgium's coalition government.

Neither of these EU leadership selections received widespread recognition among the European public. Much of the European public, if at all aware of these new developments, was bemused rather than concerned. Who are these people? What are their powers exactly? Should the public be concerned, or even care, or is this yet another Brussels happening, one that will have little if anything to do with Europe at large, other than costing the taxpayers additional euro-pennies?

The EU, an expert at policy rather than practice, is like a ship that up to now has selected rudders rather than elected figureheads. The goal with Lisbon, van Rumpuy, and the Barroness Ashton is efficiency rather than recognition. The EU wants to get things done—any benefit to the concept of European democracy is a spinoff rather than a planned development.

This does not mean that democracy won't be helped, just that the first and foremost impact of the new EU order in 2010 is internal efficiency and decision-making. The EU has upgraded, and future users should find it easier to use and more effective but not necessarily more interactive. Brussels is still an isolated centre of government, but it is an increasingly efficient platform for European political power. If the new efficiency works, and if the new leaders are able to better integrate and coordinate the European institutions, then more people - that is, more Europeans from the European public - will hopefully be invited to participate in their European government.

But just not yet.

I got kudos

2009-12-08T00:57:00.000-08:00

My blog was posted as one of the top five under-rated EU blogs here.

I'm really flattered.
The blog's author, Yasin Akgun, noted that my last post was about language lessons in Brussels. I guess my main interest is in EU politics, but I blog a lot about Brussels life and "how to" in Brussels in order to save non-EU citizens from repeating problems that I had in finding my way around Brussels. I like this aspect of my blog and audience, and I think it offers an honest, more well-rounded picture of EU politics as they are played on the ground in Brussels.

For those interested,
Here are my posts marked "European Union".
Here are my posts makred "EU vs. US".
Here are posts about my favorite institution, the European Court of Justice.
And here are some more "how to" blogs about life in Brussels.

I've written a lot for over two years, so I can't remember all that I have covered. But it's been fun, and this is great motivation to keep it up. Thanks!

Language classes in Brussels-where, when, what type and how much

2009-12-06T10:55:00.000-08:00

There are a plethora of language schools in Brussels offering all the European languages (including Arabic). Most categorize levels of linguistic capacity in the EU format. Many offer negotiated rates for individuals, small groups of friends, or companies. In fact, in Brussels, it is normal to have your company pay for half of your language lessons. Below I have listed the language schools in Brussels that I've discovered. I've tried to include links to blogs by teachers or students attending class at the different schools. Please feel free to let me know if I'm inaccurate or if I've missed a school (which is very likely).

There are a number of freelance language teachers who work with schools but also offer private lessons directly to students. If you go to a language school and really love a particular teacher, ask the teacher if he or she offers private lessons as an independent teacher. This can make your lessons cheaper and more flexible, and more profitable for the teacher. There are also French language Meet-ups in Brussels. This is a free language exchange that can really help improve your French while introducing you to some new people and places in Brussels.

One more piece of information before the Brussels school listings. My native nation, the USA, has no official language. We have never had an official language. In Brussels, it is difficult to find a European who doesn't speak and study at least three languages (unless the European is British). The USA has more or less adopted English as our default lingua franca, but we also are also the fifth largest Spanish-speaking nation, and some of our states try preserve an official language through state government intervention--for example Hawaiian in Hawaii and French in Louisianna. However, in the USA, our national perogative appears to be widespread communication more than in linguistic studies. I found this to be true also in India, where I noticed that there are several default languages, with many mixing local dialects. In China or several Arabic countries, citizens study a pure central language but tend to speak the default lingua franca dialect. Few countries and continents are as dedicated to the pure study and preservation of specific, separate languages as the EU and its Member States. This, to me, is an interesting European phenomenon.

1. Alliance Francaise, located at Rue de la Loi 26, teaches French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish. Call 32 (0)2 502 46 49 or email info@alliancefr.be to talk to the school.
This is an international school dedicated to sharing Frank-o-phone culture with the world. In Brussels, they now offer courses plus a one month internship. (I don't know how I feel about the language school forcing interns to pay for the opportunity to work in Brussels, but there you have it.)
Levels of language include Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced. I looked at the class prices ("tarifs" en francaise), and found the costs somewhat complicated (and expensive). However, the benefit in paying so much is the international recognition of your certificate.
Alliance Francaise offers

Adult courses including General adult courses each month (containing 10 to 15 students), several tailor-made individual courses including one course designed for EU trainees, a "French at your own pace" course, EU workshops including administrative writing and Legal French, and summer courses;
French for Juniors, with no more than six students per class, including General courses summer courses offered all year for ages 13 to 16;
Tailor-made company training;
Diploma tests and official accredidation, including a TCF (a test of knowledge in the French language offering official proof of your level), a DELF (diploma of studies in the French language), a DALF (diploma of French language ability), and a DHEF (Higher Certificate in French Studies);
Teacher training for French teachers or fluent French speakers.
Each Alliance Francaise course option has a PDF download, found under the label "Prices" about midway down each course description page. There is usually an inscription fee to sign up. The fee covers all the materials in class and ensures students access to the organization's Resource Centre, which has hundreds of books, comic strips, DVDs, videos, audio cassettes and CDs, brochures and exhibitions in French.
The blog reviews that I found are mixed. Here is a 2009 negative post about the language academy. Here's a positive commercial post that offers additional price info, but please look at the Alliance Francaise website for current prices.

2. OpenContext specializes in Dutch, English, French and Spanish. On the website, the school describes itself as "youthful", with "a synthesis of both linguistic and artistic expertise". Each language has five levels (Beginner, Explorer, Discoverer, Researcher, and Inventor). OpenContext is located near Place Sainte-Catherine, between Place de Brouckère and Place Sainctelette. Call +32 (o)2 218 30 66 for more information or email the head of the school, Florence.
It's 50 euros deposit to reserve a spot in a language class. Language teachers looking for work can look here, but only if you already have your work VISA.
OpenContext offers
- Large Group courses (10 students), every Monday and Wednesday OR Tuesday and Thursday, for 12 weeks. This equals 36 hours at 7.50 euros an hour, a total of 270 euros per level taught;
- Private courses--there are five levels of private courses. Remedial Classes or Exam/job interview classes are offered one on one or in a small group and completely tailored to the individuals involved. (In other words, price and hours are negotiable.) Semi-private courses are offered to one or two students--price is 21.78 euros per hour with students being required to take 22.5 hours, totaling 490 euros per level. Private immersion courses are provided one-on-one and cost 39.89 euros an hour--a student must take a total of 45 hours, costing 1795 euros in total;
- Company courses include a group company course with a minimum of three students and all prices and times to be negotiated, or a private or semi-private company course with a minimum of two students with all prices and hours negotiable. The school offers special rates to non-profit organisations;
- Kids courses are also available, including Language training for kids over a two week period, every day, Monday to Friday, 14.00 to 16.00, with a maximum of eight students per class. The price is 9.75 euros an hour, with a requirement of at least 20 hours totaling 195 euros. The Kids Course option meets one to two times a week for three to six months. With a maximum of eight students, kids taking a Kids Course must pay for a total of 36 hours, at 8.86 euros an hour, a total of 319 euros per course level.
The next group courses at OpenContext start the week of the 18th of January. Most group courses are held in the evening, beginning at 19.30 or at 10 am Saturday mornings. Here's a 2007 blog from an English teacher that worked at Opencontext--it sounds like the teacher did a good job but without a lot of support (or money) from the central company. Plus, here's a post by a pleased student learning Dutch.

3. CLL, famous for a funny ad campaign, offers intensive French, Dutch, English, Chinese, Romanian, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Japanese, and Russian. CLL has several "Centres" for language learning. One centre is on the Rue de la Loi, phone number 32 (0)2 280 22 28, email city@cll.ucl.ac.be. There is another centre in Brussels Woluwe, phone number 32 (0)2 771 13 20, email bru@cll.ucl.ac.be. Some additional centres can be found in Louvain-la-Neuve, Namur, Vervier, and Espace Wallonie Picarde.

Language teachers, the school is currently recruiting English teachers that already have a work VISA.
All levels of language learning are offered, and there are also opportunities for immersion "home-stays" with local Frank-o-phones. Be careful with these homestays--most Bruxelloise speak English as well as French, so full French immersion may be difficult. Email lln@cll.ucl.ac.beor bru@cll.ucl.ac.be to discuss.
At CLL, classes are oral and tailored to students' interests, with grammar introduced as a side benefit as the students focus on learning to communicate. CLL offers
- Multi-month modules, including everyday French in weekly sessions of 2 hours and 30 minutes over one month. Classes are offered during the day, the evening, and every Saturday. Morning or afternoon modules are 159 euros for one month, 299 euros for 2 months, 429 euros for three months, 559 euros for four months, 689 euros for five months, 799 euros for six months, and 919 euros for seven months. Evening and and Saturday modules are offered in the same format but cost about twenty to thirty additional euros;
- Intensive morning modules of two weeks, starting anew every two weeks;
- Intensive evening modules for three weeks, three evenings a week, with a new session each month. Intensive evening modules focus on oral expression;
- "Special students" modules, aimed at student groups looking to learn together;
- Beginner's modules that last two weeks, every morning from Monday to Thursday, and beginning every other week;
- Group immersion, offering one week of immersion, Monday to Friday;
- Monthly modules, four weeks of intensive French, beginning each month from September to June;
- Writing workshops to help those that wish to improve their written French;
- Conversation tables offering students the ability to practice speaking in a moderated environment (that is, overseen by a teacher);
- Private lessons (51 euros an hour), individual immersion, language and theatre workshops, power business lunch lessons, and more;
Here's a 2008 post by a Brit teaching at CLL in Crainhem.

4. Amira is a well-known school located at 14-16 rue du Trône, not far from Place Luxembourg. The way that the Amira web site is constructed makes linking to specific descriptions difficult. The school offers six levels of French.
Group classes meet twice weekly (morning, afternoon, or evening), and as a student you can easily purchase private classes tailored to your individual schedule. Companies can also purchase classes. I calculated that group lessons cost each student about seven euros an hour, which is standard for Brussels, I think.
With Amira, it's best to go to the web site and download the brochures. You can call 32 (0)2-640.68.50 or 32 (0)2-640.89.54 for more information. If you email info@amira.be , the school will most likely send you a web site brochure, but this brochure may exclude a special deal being offered on a group or individual lesson. There are frequent special offers on price at Amira, and, if you pay for your session up front and in cash, you get a discount. I took both group and private lessons at Amira and was not displeased (though, of course, I need to do some further work on my French).

5. The VUB, the Flemish University, offers state-subsidized language lessons for all levels in French and Dutch.
The C.V.O.-K.H.N.B, the location for the language lessons, is located in building D of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (the VUB) campus, Room D 1.33 - Pleinlaan 2 - 1050 Brussels. For more information, visit the university office between 8.30 and 21.00 Monday to Friday or between 8.30 and 15.30 Saturday, call +32(02) 629 39 08, or email info@cvo-khnb.be. The minimum age for enrollment is 16, and you must set up an appointment to determine your aptitude. Due to the high demand for these classes, this test does not ensure a spot for you. 80 hours costs 80 euros for the class plus 40 euros for the materials. 120 hours costs 120 euros for class and 60 euros for the materials, etc.
Classes are offered
- morning 9 to 12;
- afternoon 13 to 16;
- evening 18 to 21;
- Saturday 9 to 12 or 12.30 to 15.30.
6. The Brussels Business School offers language courses in French, Spanish, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Italian, and introductions to Arabic, Chinese and Russian. The school is located on the Avenue des Arts 10-11 near downtown Brussels. Classes are offered for three leveles (Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced) with each level split into three parts and spread over three quarters between October and June. Classes are two hours per week, and students receive an official transcript (good for people looking for a student VISA). Short-term intensive programmes of between five to ten weeks are offered as well. Call 32 (0)3 283 5126 between 10 and 16.00 for more information, or email info@brussels.uibs.org.

7. The Centre d'Etude du Francais, found on the Chaussee de Vleurgat 275 offers French classes in the mornings, afternoons, evenings, and each Saturday morning. There is no web site, but the school is charming and quite good at what it does. I'm not sure of the cost, but you can call +32 (0)2 344 15 15 to find out.

8. The CPAB offers lessons in Dutch, French, and English. The next sessions begin in February 2010, with registration beginning January 11th. The school is located at 29-31 Chaussée d'Ixelles, phone number +32 (0)2.511.01.09 and email info@cpab.be. I could not find the price of a session on the web site, but I have heard that CPAB is cost-efficient. The school offers morning, afternoon, evening, and Saturday classes, and one level (there are six levels in total) costs (I think) about 300 euros. This school is used by a number of employees from my place of business. They like it, and my company usually pays about half the cost of the lessons.

9. Brussels Business School offers language courses in French, Spanish, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Italian, and introductions to Arabic, Chinese and Russian. The school is located on the Avenue des Arts 10-11 near downtown Brussels. Classes are offered for three leveles (Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced) with each level split into three parts and spread over three quarters between October and June. Classes are two hours per week, and students receive an official transcript (good for people looking for a student VISA). Short-term intensive programmes of between five to ten weeks are offered as well. Call 32 (0)3 283 5126 between 10 and 16.00 for more information, or email info@brussels.uibs.org.

10. Languages Unlimited specialises in small group (largely business) language classes. The school offers all the European languages and emphasises culture in their language classes. The school is located at Avenue de Tervueren 204, 1150, Woluwe-St. Pierre. The phone number is +32(0)2 534 7684 and the email is info@languages-unlimited.be. General group classes cost 380 euros for 30 hours. Sessions run from September to December, January to March, and April to June. Classes are offered during the day and in the evening and "on demand". As it is a business-oriented language school, they also offer special courses in presentation, examination preparation, and courses for translators and interpreters.

11. Themalingua offers German, Dutch, English, French and Italian language classes. Classes are offered morning, afternoon and evening. They can be group classes, intense immersiaon classes, private lessons or special classes offered to businesses. Call 32 (0)2.640.59.82 or email info@themalingua.be for more information. The web site is a bit out of date, so I would suggest calling or emailing for current prices and timetables.

12. Berlitz is an international language academy that offers instruction in all languages. Berlitz can come to your business or you can go to one of the two Berlitz locations in Brussels. Berlitz Montgomery is located at Avenue de Tervueren 265, phone number 32 (0)2 763 14 14. The second location is at Avenue Louise 306-310.
Contact Berlitz and they will call you to discuss your needs. Berlitz is expensive, but the special "Berlitz method" is supposed to work magic on your language skills. The best part is that they really will tailor a class to your needs, or find you a group class that works for you. Berlitz also offers language classes to children and teenagers.

I've also heard of a school called ABEL, located on the Rue des Résédas 25 that teaches languages through auto-hypnosis. There is no website that I can find, but the phone number is is 32 (0)2 520 94 35. Let me know if you know anything of this school--I've heard it teaches a number of European languages.

There are also a number of cultural institutions offering more specialised language lessons. For example, the Danish Cultural Institute teaches several Nordic languages. There is also the Instituto Cervantes, the Spanish language equivalent of Alliance Francaise, for people looking to improve their Spanish. Post more if you know of a few, please. I'm sure that I've overlooked several.

Gender equality in Belgium

2009-11-28T00:53:00.000-08:00

In the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index 2009, Belgium ranks well in education levels between men and women. But when we get to economic and political decision-making, Belgium drops to the 60s...

"The lack of equality in economic life is not anecdotal… more than 60% of graduates are women despite the fact that we make up only 5% of the top management of companies and 3% of CEOs! Companies are depriving themselves of such talent and diversity within their management and, in turn, economic performance is not what it could be. Numerous studies have analysed the link between diversity and performance and all came to the same conclusion – there is a positive correlation. But that’s not all… in accepting gender inequality in the labour market; it’s the entire country that is abandoning the idea of growth. A recent Swedish government study, prepared for the EU presidency, reveals that if the activity rate (employment + working hours) of women were equal to that of men, Belgium’s GDP would increase by 26%, which is equal to 5000 euros or more per person per year. This would mean an average increase of 14% in the EU’s GDP."

In my opinion, the lack of transparency in salary and career structure puts women working in Belgium at a disadvantage--most companies probably pay men more than women for the same work because salaries are negotiated person-to-person rather than attached to the employment position (Attaching salary to position rather than person is how most US companies do it. Law suits have their advantages, especially when it comes to gender, minority status, and salary transparency.)

The report also points out that most Belgian companies (and political groups) advance male decision-makers more frequently than women. Culturally, in Belgium, women run the day-to-day in the home. This doesn't mean that they are less productive at their "salaried jobs"-sometimes doing more actually means being more organised and more efficient with the time that you have, meaning that female employees are more productive than male employees in the amount of time. But it does mean that women employees are less likely to push for a higher salary and more career opportunity. They'd rather get their work done and get home, so if the opportunity isn't offered or obvious, they rarely push for it.

Where companies lose out is that most women prefer work that they enjoy. Thus women are more loyal to the companies where they enjoy the work than where they are paid the most. Enjoyment of course can include being able to work flexibly if their home responsibilities demand it.

At least in my case, this study rings true. I work in Belgium. I like where I work. I like the people. I'm happy working there. I want to do a good job, and I don't mind staying late if this is necessary. Plus, they let me go early on days where I have an external responsibility, which, because I like the work, I try to avoid. I could see myself having a career within the company because it feels like a good long-term "fit".

This last week was more (I hope) interesting info than useful. The upcoming week will re-focus on useful. I want to cover money transfers, health care in Belgium, crèche information, and language classes. Email me if there is something else that I should research.

The power audit of EU-US relations

2009-11-24T15:29:00.000-08:00

Tonight I attended a Transatlantic Network event hosted by the German Marshall Fund. A panel met to discuss a report released by two of the speakers, Jeremy Shapiro (USA diplomat) and Nick Witney (EU Foreign Relations Council senior fellow).

Does the USA ignore the EU itself because the EU is irrelevant in comparison with its Members? The report by Shapiro and Witney suggests that the US works more with individual Member State governments than EU representatives because the EU is less effective than the Member States when it comes to international relations.

Member States produce policy and make promises--a necessary aspect of foreign relations--while the EU avoids conclusions and pontificates principles. Shapiro and Witney's report does not excuse the USA for its divide and rule approach to Europe. The report instead notes that the USA's approach makes sense, given the what the EU currently lacks--leadership and coherency.

These EU and US diplomat discussions always include a sarcastic exchange of cultural stereotypes. The EU pundit inevitably mentions the shooting at Columbine and the American "obsession" with the right to bear arms. The Americans end up defending their own policies when they came to critique the EU. "We don't do it but neither do you" is an broadly accepted diplomatic defense and a great talking point.

However, the panel did agree that lack of leadership is a problem in Europe. Despite accepting and distributing around 70 percent of the EU budget, Member State governments are not very supportive of the EU itself, nor are they keen on European integration. At the same time, the EU eurocrats based in Brussels are obsessed with consensus, and anyone watching President Obama and Congress in the USA know that strong leadership can demolish consensus. Finally, the EU works very hard to preserve national and cultural identity and independence. The EU integrates economics--it is very careful not to challenge national sovereignty. To do so might invite a more centralised leadership for all of Europe. Then there's the disconnect between the Brussels eurocrats running the EU and their "average European" constituents. I mean, the "average European" pays taxes, which is more than can be said for their EU representatives.

One begins to see why USA diplomatic decision makers might bypass Brussels.

Cimatics is happening now in Brussels

2009-11-22T15:18:00.000-08:00

For the next few days at least, Brussels, Belgium, is the official capital of global digital culture.

Cimatics is a digital culture festival that started Friday and will last nine more days. Events in all things digital are hosted all over Brussels. This includes events in experimental art, music, video games, online media, and digital workshops. There is even a mobile concert platform sliding around the city. Call 0495-49 5175 to find out where and what band is playing.

Belgian universities have some amazing computer science programmes, so expect to run into some extremely talented Belgian students at the different events. If you've ever considered increasing your digital interest and skills, ask the students for recommendations. The University of Leuven in particular is doing some creative and useful work in software development.

In my opinion, and in the opinion of a few others, Belgium is underrated when it comes to technology and global digital advancements. Belgium is rich (well, Flanders is). Belgium is international. Belgian students typically speak, read, and write three to five languages fluently. Belgian universities are cheap to attend and attract a lot of international digital talent and investment. Given time (and less restrictive Internet companies) and we may see Belgium at the forefront of international digital culture. The seventh Cimatics is certainly a good start.

Match your skills to your job in Brussels

2009-11-21T01:43:00.000-08:00

Ex-pat employees in Brussels have a lot of skills and expertise. Many speak two to three languages fluently. Most have at least one Masters degree, frequently two or three. Most importantly, all are motivated individuals working more for passion and experience than proper pay.

In response, Brussels-based employers are overwhelmed, and some can be a little greedy and short-sighted. With so much cheap and talented labour, an over-qualified person is frequently hired for an “under-qualified” job.

This is a frustrating Brussels practice—one that I am glad to have escaped. To put an employee in a role where that employee will soon be bored and frustrated threatens motivation and interest. Bored employees work more slowly, feel less loyalty, and are generally more resentful of their positions—ergo, poor customer service and poor, inconsistent results. Bored employees don’t invest in clients, a company, or an organisation that doesn’t respect their capabilities.

Worse, some brilliant employees are hired for positions for which they don’t have the skills. Despite her phD in economics, an employee hired to create PowerPoint presentations for a marketing campaign may not be competent enough in Microsoft software to make an adequate presentation. It’s not that the doctor is a dunce—the task just isn’t what she spent almost three decades in school preparing for. But instead of seeing the mismatch between her employment and her skill set, the doctor may simply feel dumb and de-motivated while her boss just feels irritated. The PowerPoint expert who wasn’t hired because he had Masters in Administration and not a phD in economics may feel smug, if unemployed.

New EU leaders-A President and a foreign minister

2009-11-19T14:37:00.000-08:00

Like modern aristocrats, many Eurocrats are overpaid and undercharged. For example, Eurocrats are exempt from Belgian taxes. They get around 40 paid days of vacation a year. They have 35 hour work weeks, enormous EU expense accounts, and many arrange to leave Brussels early Thursday or Friday evening for long weekends at their second home outside the city.

Last night, the Eurocrats used Belgian policemen-provided free of charge by those of us who pay Belgian taxes-to shut down Schuman for the formal election of the EU Council President and the EU high representative on foreign affairs and security. These are two new positions created by the recently passed and still controversial Lisbon Treaty.

The President will be Herman van Rompuy, the Belgian Prime Minister. I wonder which job will be less demanding-neither position currently provides the public a lot of action. The new EU foreign minister is an actual aristocrat from the UK, the Baroness Cathrine Ashton. At the moment, she is also the EU trade minister. Some suspect she might have received the new position because former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair did not receive the EU Council Presidency. Perhaps Blair had less free time than van Rompuy to network for the post.

Essential to Brussels business, Eurocrats are both the faucet and the drain in our economic sink. It will be interesting to see if what the Council President and EU foreign minister add to the city is worth what they cost European-particularly the Belgian-taxpayers.

Lawyers in Brussels

2009-11-18T11:30:00.000-08:00

I have had a few requests about where to find lawyers in Brussels. A lawyer in Brussels directed me to this website: http://www.barreaudebruxelles.be/m1.php. This is a database containing the contact details and specialties of all the lawyers in Brussels.

To find a lawyer in an area of interest to you, click the small arrow next to the empty space labeled "Matière". "Matière" indicates the lawyer's area of legal expertise. Civil law notaries are also allowed to offer certain legal advice. It's civil law here--codified law, based on the Napoleonic code, rather than law interpreted by judges. For Americans, that means it's like law in the state of Louisiana, not in the rest of the country.

To find lawyers to specialise in the laws of those from outside the EU, look under 2210, "autres doits nationaux". If anyone has information as to cost, please feel free to share.

Belgian train strike

2009-11-17T00:59:00.000-08:00

I left for vacation Thursday 2 weeks ago. The National Railway Company of Belgium held a strike that same day. My seven-hour train ride became a 2 hour bus ride followed by an hour-long train to Paris and an overnight sleeper train to the South of France. It took me over 12 hours to reach my destination.

The strike began at 10 pm Wednesday and remained in force all of Thursday. The Belgian train unions were protesting plans to restructure the cargo unit of the NMBS-SNCB (the national railway company). The unions claim that there is a lack of transparency in the restructuring and that, with 3000 jobs at stake, they need to know what management is planning.

It's a strange illustration of Belgian monopolies that the NMBS-SNCB can shut down all national and international train travel in Belgium. Even in France, a strike can't shut down all trains. Thalys and Eurostar used buses to reroute us travelers that refused to reschedule.

Internet price petition by Test Achats

2009-11-16T01:57:00.001-08:00

Test-Achats, an advocacy group for consumers in Belgium, is mobilising public opinion to improve the cost of Internet in Belgium. Sign their petition. As they say, each voice counts.

The petition: http://www.test-achats.be/internet/internet-trop-cher-signez-notre-petition-s616763.htm

You can use the translation engine systranet to see what's been written on the site: http://www.systranet.com/

I'm trying shorter, more immediately useful posts. I seem to have gained a lot of readers looking for useful info. I may do longer posts Fridays, for my pleasure and, I hope, theirs. In the meantime, I hope the shorter, more frequent posts prove helpful.

Additional Internet provider in Brussels

2009-11-09T01:40:00.000-08:00

5. Voo (also added to the central Internet in Brussels post, found here.)

I got this info from a reader. The reader notes that Voo is "a local provider that, as far as I can tell, only operates in Brussels. This subsidiary of Brutelé has one clear advantage over other providers: no maximum bandwith usage every month (like Base, I just read). Voo does look a bit more flexible, with different subscription models."

Prices range from 20 euros for the "un peu" surfers, to 34 euros a month for "Beaucoup"surfers, to 40 euros a month for the "Passionnement"surfers.

Voo is also hiring, which might interest some readers.

choosing your Internet service in Belgium

2009-11-03T07:57:00.000-08:00

I have been asked to blog about options in Internet in Belgium. This is according to my experience. Please contribute if your experience is different.

In lieu of proactive government, Belgium appears to be run by two monopolies. In a sci-fi twist, these monopolies happen to be the owners of the Belgian information service infrastructure.

This does not mean that you must purchase Internet directly from one of these Belgian monopolies. My understanding is that additional companies are permitted to sell information services in Belgium. However, these interlopers must provide their services via the Belgian technical infrastructure that is owned by the Belgian monopolies. The Belgian monopolies lease their own infrastructure to their competitors, making their competitors also their customers.

Thus, the customers of the Belgian monopolies’ competitors are “third tier” customers of the Belgian monopolies themselves. These Belgian monopolies know exactly what the word “monopoly” means. They generally use their monopoly position to limit bandwidth--for computers and phones.

the Internet “options”

1. Ozone Belgium http://ozonebe.net/home_en.html

I would really like to try this option. As far as I can tell, Ozone.be eludes the Belgian monopolies. But I can’t get a signal in my area (Place Flagey).
This is a wi-fi option that subscribers can access anywhere there is an Ozone signal. All you need is a password. Here’s how I understand it:
Antennae are positioned strategically throughout Brussels and other Belgian cities. These antennae make up a wi-fi “web”. To purchase the Internet, go to the ozone.be web site. Try to visit a different site (e.g. “Google”). If you are immediately re-directed to a hotspot web site, you can access the “Ozone”. Then you can choose one of a series of payment options, from a one-time payment for a single session to a series of sessions to an online subscription. If you own the building, or you can get your landlord to agree to host an antenna, you might be able to receive free access.

Subscription options include:

The short-term pass:

Pass-1: 4 mega download, 1 mega upload, IP dynamic for 2 euros an hour
Pass-24: 4 mega download, 1 mega upload, IP dynamic for 10 euros a day

Monthly packages

Oxygen: 1 mega download, 256k upload, IP dynamic, for 10 euros a month
Electric: 1 mega download, 1 mega upload, IP dynamic, for 20 euros a month
Lightning: 5 mega download, 4 mega upload, IP fixed, for 30 euros a month

2. Belgacom http://www.belgacom.be/

There is the mother of all Belgian Internet, the aptly named “Belgacom”. Belgacom regularly runs specials on its web site. Many of these specials offer cheap internet for about 6 months and far more expensive internet for the next six months. All contracts are valid for at least a year. This means that if you sign, you use Belgacom Internet for the year or you pay a “quit fee” that will probably be the equivalent of using Belgacom for the year.

There a myriad of Belgacom Internet options, most available in ADSL. You are supposed to be able to negotiate an option that fits your needs. Ironically, Belgacom owns the telephone and television lines (or its sister-monopoly, Telenet does). Thus, you can get a TV-phone-Internet deal. Recently, Belgacom had some alleged security problems with hackers.

Like a cult, Belgacom is easy to join and impossible to escape without drinking a lot of bitter Kool aid. Some ground rules:

Print the web page advertising any special rate that you purchase. I had a friend that was overcharged and needed a print screen to prove she'd purchased a special rate.
Save every receipt, every contract, and every email.
Sign up to receive your bill by snail mail and pay by bank transfer. That way you can dispute incorrect charges rather than have the charges automatically siphoned from your bank account. If Belgacom takes your money, it is near impossible to get it back.
Understand that the different parts of Belgacom, such as the billing, the sales and the technical support sections, have little or no communication between them. Cancel your subscription in one department, and you are almost guaranteed to continue to hear from the other.
Sometimes, they cancel for you, and you just stop receiving Internet. Keep all relevant phone numbers and be prepared to spend hours online if this happens to you.

3. Telenet http://telenet.be/219/0/1/en/residential/internet.html

This is the "other" Belgian monopoly, best known for television versus Internet. Once again, not a lot of download for the cheaper price. The best deals through Telenet include television-Internet combinations. Service can still be a problem. Telenet provides the Internet via cable.

I've never used Telenet. I looked it up on blogs and have tried to integrate these into the post.

A good comparison of the options available between the Belgian duopoly can also be found here.

4. Clearwire

Already got a comment (within 12 hours) about this service. They need to be in a place where wi-fi reception is easy (e.g. high up and with lots of buildings to rebound the wi-fi service). Best part is you can hook up immediately.

5. Voo

Prices range from 20 euros for the "un peu" surfers, to 34 euros a month for "Beaucoup" surfers, to 40 euros a month for the "Passionnement"surfers.

Voo is also hiring, which might interest some readers.

Belgacom babies

Belgacom babies are businesses that may have been independent initially. However, now they have been absorbed into the Belgacom infrastructure. They sell the same product, just under a different brand name. The babies are also more into wi-fi, in my limited experience.

1. Mobistar

Mobistar uses, from what I can tell, the Belgacom infrastructure to sell IT services. Individual users like Mobistar because it offers simple mobile Internet in its USB “Internet Everywhere” hook-up. Mobistar is also the source for the Belgian iPhone. Then again, the price is high for the megabytes provided and service is reportedly sluggish. Go over your allotted megabytes and you get an inflated bill at the end of the month. You can download a programme to track the megabytes used. This programme has nothing to do with Mobistar itself. I assume a frustrated and sympathetic customer developed it.

3. Base

Base is an alternative to Mobistar and a subsidiary provider of Belgacom services. They were offering unlimited download 30 euros a month. With Base, it’s easiest to buy their modem already configured for Internet access. This modem is delivered by TaxiPost within 3 weeks of ordering Internet services.

You can technically use your own modem to access your Internet. To do so does require you to phone the Base Internet services, open Monday through Saturday, 9.00 to 18.00 hours. You must then negotiate a machine in either French or Dutch to reach a human being capable of guiding you through the modem set-up.

3. Proximus

Also used for mobile Internet. I have no personal experience here either. Some blog research reveals pretty standard Belgian pricing and service. Any input would be much appreciated.

General guidelines for expats

All Belgian Internet contracts are a minimum of one year. Leave your contract early and you must pay an exorbitant “quit fee”.

Essential to remember, from an American standpoint, is that the IT salespeople in Brussels do not understand what they are selling and are under no obligation to understand what they are selling. In my own country, a good salesman with poor information can tie a service provider into a contract that helps the customer and hurts the provider. In the USA, for better or worse, a salesman is a legal representative of the company, and the customer is always right. That’s why American customers are generally regarded as arrogant assholes—it’s our system. In Belgium, this is not the case. In Belgium, a salesman is a magician who will disappear as soon as he’s tricked you into signing on to a service.

The best way to approach a Belgian salesperson is to secure the person’s business card and then over-react, rather than simply react, to Belgian customer service:

If the salesperson is helpful, don’t simply be grateful, be extremely grateful. I have had good customer service from Belgian ISP providers. I want it to happen again. I sent complimentary emails.
If the service is horrible, don’t be irritated. Anger is not effective, and asserting yourself in person can be counter-productive. Instead, be cold and logical to the salesperson’s face. Mention the Belgian Ombudsmen for the Internet and the consumer advocate group Test Achats. Promise and then remember to send a registered letter to customer service offices. Write the name of the salesperson, the address of the store, and mention Test Achats and the Belgian Ombudsmen.

USA and Europe: a theory on diversity and unity

2009-10-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

A theory: The USA has diversity and unity. Europe has diversity but lacks unity. The American approach works in America. The European approach works in Europe.

The USA:

In the USA, national unity and national diversity are possible because Americans are goal-oriented.

Americans pick a goal to achieve as a group. For example, Americans choose to have one country of an immense size and population with no official language or recognizable culture. But the USA is a country nonetheless. That is the agreed-upon goal. Whatever the individual citizens involved in that goal (national unity) do to achieve and maintain that goal is up to them. Americans are of course interested in how each individual citizen achieves the goal of “nation”. But in America the result, rather than the method, is of primary importance.

This emphasis on achievement rather than how-to-achieve is why Americans argue all the time. A group of Americans can usually agree on an end product, the group’s “goal”. This goal might be, for example, winning an election or making a profit or providing health care, or eliminating racism or saving the environment or cheaper oil or winning a war or fighting a disease or a new software, etc.

What Americans can’t agree on—what is the subject of endless debate, discussion and subjective and objective evaluation and reevaluation—what Americans will never agree on is the best way to achieve the pre-defined goal. Because in the USA, once a goal is defined, the methods for achieving that goal are as diverse as the individuals interested in the achievement. In the USA, often two parties or three coalitions or a million different groups are dedicated to the same goal. This situation can result in dividing (or hiding or stealing or inventing) the resources needed to achieve the goal. This American “goal orientation” means that competition can pre-empt collaboration.

Diversity, and with it disagreement, debate and competition, play an important part in American unity. To an American, the best way to prove that your method is worthwhile is to achieve the method’s pre-defined goal. Achieve the goal first, and your method must be the best. For now.

In Europe:

The “European” approach welcomes diversity. However, “European” diversity is cautious and systematic. In Europe, diversity is preserved at the expense of European unity. At the same time, without this preservation of diversity, any unity in Europe would be impossible.

Europe catalogues culture and diversity. The final decision in European politics, while important, is not as important as the agreement that a “final” decision implies. In European politics, agreement is the purpose of a political discussion. A debate is meant to avoid dissension rather than result in a conclusion. Most European decisions are qualified. They are not settled. They are agreements. They are not endings.

All the most important EU documents are translated into the 23 official European languages (including Gaelic). This is not because the documents are actually requested by the different linguistic communities. This is because to reach an agreement, everyone must be involved or capable of involvement. These documents do not usually have an immense impact on the European population. That is not the point of the publication of the documents. The point of publication is inclusion and eventual accord. The documents reinforce the diversity of European culture and language. Yet the documents also permit all Europeans to access a unified European thought process.

This does not mean that there is unified European community. This does not mean that there is a uniform European legislation. Most European nations do not implement European legislation in a consistent way. For example, a person can legally smoke in a bar in Belgium if a certain amount of alcohol versus food is served. This is not true in Sweden, where European smoking regulation is stricter. The European rules banning smoking in public places are thus shared. But these rules are shared diversely

In Europe, if an action occurs, it occurs unilaterally but is not uniform. That is, the diverse nation-states make the same agreement in the same way but do not expect the same result. The agreement is what is important, not the decision. The unity of Europe is expressed in the agreement between diverse European communities.

Rather than pick a goal, divide up into teams, and hurtle towards the goal as the Americans do, the European approach is carefully concerted. The goal of the EU, if there is a goal, seems to be coordinated movement rather than movement itself. In the USA, movement is where difference is best expressed. The country’s unified destination is where the American states express unity.

Packages in Belgium

2009-10-19T13:10:00.000-07:00

Community is expressed in many ways.

In the USA, community could be found in collected groups. The individuals that “collected” these groups made camps, towns, or villages. They depended upon their community colleagues to ensure these camps, towns or villages. A fantastic example of this trust is the Pony Express. The Pony Express was the origin of the modern American postal system. Begun 1860, the Pony Express delivered the mail—throughout the rural USA. The Pony Express was made up of mailmen on horseback. These riders carried the mail across the American midWest, starting in the state of Missouri ( 180,516 sq km) and ending in the state of California ( 423,970 sq km). That is more than 2,437 kilometers-if you are flying. It's farther if you are on horseback and crossing the Rocky Mountains or the Grand Canyon.

The Pony Express worked like this:
A family member in St. Louis sent a letter or a package to a beloved in Portland, Oregon, 3,322 kilometers away (this is a big, rocky country). This family member hoped, had faith—trusted that this package or letter would reach its destination. (Oregon the state, by the way is 251,419 sq km.)

Mailmen in the USA were revered. They held a sacred trust with their national community. They delivered, or they died. Many died. More delivered. They still do, though not on horseback (most of them).

Ah, but that their creed had spread to the Old Countries.

In Belgium (30,510 sq km), packages depend upon the person that delivers. This person does not necessarily depend upon a creed.

True stories, told first-hand to me:
A lost 100 pound suit supposedly delivered to the door of the Scottish owner who was not home. The suit was never seen again—at least, not by any Scotsman (Scotland is 78,772 sq km). A female from Florida (170,304 sq km) received a new camera from her father two weeks after the camera had entered Brussels. The new camera was in a plastic bag, not its original box. The camera was coated in chocolate. The father of the new camera’s owner had not sent her any chocolates (Coals to Newcastle, you know…). Lastly there is the tale of a young woman who received a card listing all her gifts. Half of these gifts were not in the box. After several letters of complaint, the gifts remain at large in (presumably) the country of Belgium….

So how to deliver packages in whole in Belgium?

There are three choices of delivery: one public, two private, and all subject to Belgian Customs.

Belgian customs:
Belgian customs taxes are extortion, more or less. Anything over 20 euros delivered to an individual (not a business, mind you) merits a tax if it is new. If it is marked “used” on the box, the box will be opened, and the “used” status verified by a Belgian customs official. If the official agrees that the objects within the box are new, there is no tax. If the objects have a tag, or appear not-so-used, a customs tax is levied.

On a delivery worth a declared 300 euros, a tax of 120 euros is levied. On a delivery worth a declared 20, about 15 to 20 euros is levied (in my experience).

A used package can be modified in delivery, though no one knows how (or by whom). Just check with recipients to ensure all items are received.

Belgian delivery:
Taxipost provides public Belgian delivery. In Brussels, Taxipost delivers between 8 and 17.00 hours. If the recipient of the package is not at home, Taxipost leaves a calling card. The recipient is then able to schedule a day (but not an hour) for delivery. The recipient should choose a day when s/he will not leave home between the hours of 8 and 17.00, Monday through Friday. Or the recipient should have Taxipost deliver to his or her office, should the recipient actually work between those hours—surprisingly, many people do.

If the recipient is not at home (or at work) upon the time of Taxipost delivery twice—TWICE—the recipient must visit the official Taxipost office outside of Brussels. To reach the Taxipost office, a person needs either a car or a taxi. With any available public transportation, the recipient will still have to walk quite a bit.

Taxipost employees are public. They are secure in their job, if crap at it.

There are web sites and blogs dedicated to the destruction of Taxipost—Belgian web sites.

Private delivery:
Two private delivery options in Belgium include FedEx and DHL. Both are subject to Belgian customs laws. Both are somewhat more expensive than Taxipost—but both have a good, strong business in Brussels.

Both FedEx and DHL are also subject to Belgian customer therapy, er, service. I remember speaking with a FedEx employee one Thursday…

Me: “So, we are agreed, you will not deliver the package until next week? I won’t be in town this week. As I told you, I will be out of town this week. ”

“Yes, okay,” the FedEx employee replied. “But could you call my colleague tomorrow? I am not responsible for my colleague, you see.”

Thus the whole point of an organisation is lost upon this young Belgian man. When one realizes what the Belgians get from their service providers, one begins to understand why their politicians are so lax.

Yet FedEx will at least do its best to get a recipient a package in tact and untouched by sticky fingers. DHL is equally skilled. However, a recipient will still have to transfer the customs taxes to an unnamed numbered account. In Belgium, the government is skilled at extortion. Also, these taxes must be paid prior to package delivery and the package will be delivered during working hours (between 8 and 17.00). If a package is delivered to the work place, a recipient must pray that his or her colleagues like the recipient enough to sign in the recipient’s absence.

Legal co-habitation in Brussels

2009-10-11T23:19:00.000-07:00

From a very helpful reader:

The path to residency by way of legal cohabitation is the following (at least for us and our commune!).

Register as a legally cohabitating couple

Submit the following paperwork for each person to the local commune:

- birth certificate *
- certificate of cellibacy * #
- photocopy of passport or EU identity card
- certificate of nationality (photocopy of passport for Americans)
- six passport photos

* Documents have to be "legalized," and if in a language other than French or Dutch, you must provide a "certified translation" by a "sworn translator." For Americans, a "legalized" document is one that is notarized, and to which the notary's state has applied an "apostille" that certifies that the notary is registered in the state. A "sworn translator" is a translator who is registered with a court in Belgium as a sworn translator. A "certified translation" is a translation that has been certified as having been translated by a sworn translator. The court at which the translator is registered applies this certification to the translation itself.

# For Americans, this is an affidavit that you write and sign that simply swears that you are "never married." Not sure what the process is if you are divorced. There is no official version of this affidavit, but there are examples on the web. Search for "affidavit of celibacy." This document also must be legalized.

You submit the paperwork and then wait. The police come around to verify you are in fact living together (they check to see that both names are on the doorbell, or in our case, leave a summons and ask you to come by the station). Then you get summoned to the commune to sign the contract acknowledging that you are a registered legally cohabitating couple. They give you a document acknowledging your status. The result was rather anticlimactic, considering the effort involved. The least they could have done is offered champagne.

Apply for residency

Now you can apply for residency under the family reunification laws. Fortunately this is much easier. The non-EU national simply has to submit:

- acknowledgement of legal cohabitation provided by commune
- copy of passport
- proof of "durability" of relationship, consisting of letters, photos, plane tickets, testaments, etc. They are looking for evidence that the relationship is durable. The guidelines are that it has lasted at least two years long distance, or that you have lived together at least one year. Having a child together is also good.

They tell you it will take five months for a decision, and give you a temporary card (Attestation d'Immatriculation) authorizing you to remain in Belgium throughout the five month period. The police come around to again verify you are living with your legal cohabitant. Then either the commune summons you or you go to the commune the day after your temporary card expires, whichever comes first.

I have heard that you can work while waiting for the decision, but have not confirmed that. Also, for Americans, once you stay past your initial three month tourist visa, you are kind of in limbo. You are legally allowed to stay within Belgium while waiting for the residency decision, but this limbo status is not recognized at the border. If you were to leave the EU and try to reenter, and if they were to check your passport stamps, you would be required to wait three months before being allowed back in. In extreme circumstances, you can request a re-entry permit from the commune prior to leaving the EU, but in general, they want you to stay in Belgium while your application is being considered.

Question from helpful reader: As far as my question, I am close to the end of my five months of waiting for a residency permit. I expect they will grant me residency, except our relationship falls short of the guidelines in terms of duration. In the case that they don't grant me residency, are there any other avenues along which I could apply for residency from within Belgium? I don't necessarily need a work permit; I simply want to be able to remain in Belgium with my girlfriend, and have the ability to return to the US from time to time without encountering issues when crossing the border.

Linda's response: Enroll in classes in a Belgian university (not so expensive--maybe 500 euros for the year), obtain a letter of enrollment, and apply for a student VISA. Alternatively, apply to take a specific number of language classes, and apply for a student VISA. Do this with your commune, not the country--the Commune is the government office that grants you the right to extend your stay.

Next post: how to get a package delivered in Belgium...trickier than you'd expect....

Japanese Cultural event

2009-10-06T00:18:00.000-07:00

Hey Linda,

There is a performance sponsored by the Japanese embassy today.
The location is close to boi de la cambre and Louise.
This performance is called Jyoururi. Watching these performances used to be a luxuary for high ranked people back in 18th century.
It is free.

日時：10月６日（火）　18：30
場所：HEB ISTI（ブリュッセル外国語大学）
　　　Rue J. Hazard 34
　　　1180　Brussles

日本人会事務局

HEB ISTI, RUE J. HAZARD 34, 1180 BRUSSELS
6.30 PM ADMISSION FREE

TUESDAY 6 OCTOBER

This event is organised by HEB ISTI (Institut supérieur de traducteurs et interprètes)and the Embassy of Japan.
Promotion: Mu:arts ltd.　　www.muarts.org.uk
Design: Simon Wright
　　

Belgian appreciation

2009-09-27T06:21:00.000-07:00

Brussels business is a European cocktail of both local and international businesses, both large and small, that employ more nationalities, from senior management to the custodial services, than any other European or American city.

Brussels business may not be easily identified as Belgian or Flemish or Wallonian. However, like a glass, these Belgian cultures and communities do contain and help shape the European cocktail. Most obviously, it’s a testament to the Belgian art of negotiation and compromise that these businesses are able to manage their multilingual and multicultural staff.

As a crossroads between Southern Europe, with its Romance languages, Catholicism, and Mediterranean traditions, and Northern Europe, with its more Germanic/Scandinavian tongues and Protestant roots, Belgium by necessity developed a business environment that is both incredibly flexible (for example when it comes to languages) but also very restricted (for example, when it comes to bureaucracy). Belgium permits outside influence while also protecting its own populations. The careful legal, political, and cultural fortification of the three Belgian linguistic communities (Flemish, French, and German) may be frustrating but it also demonstrates the level of respect Belgians have for community identity, whether ethnic, national, or language-based.

Businesses or offices based in Brussels must conform to the Belgian laws in order to be successful, but these laws are not as obscure or inaccessible as many internationals complain. Many are, in fact, reasonable and far from shortsighted.

With a strong accountant and careful planning, a business can just as easily save as lose money under Belgian tax law. A strong illustration of this is the “green business” policy that encourages Belgian businesses to offer to pay for employee transportation with added tax deductions for the percentage of employees who use public transportation. This encourages Belgian-based employees to take the metro, tram, bus and train—a policy that is better for the environment and better for the community as a whole because the country is more motivated to upkeep an affordable public transit system. There’s also an emphasis on cheap-to-free ongoing employee education with university staff offering flexible course schedules in three to four languages, and Belgian government policies that reimburse businesses that spend money to help advance their employees’ education.

There are also the policies that prioritise employee physical and mental health. As a foreign migrant worker, I may complain about customer service and efficiency, but as a migrant employee, I remain consistently surprised and gratified that these policies exist and are enforced—enforced not by conflict or strikes between employees and their supervisor, but by quiet consensus and acceptance. These policies emphasize reasonable hours, vacation time, offer employees generous time off based upon mental, emotional, and physical conditions. Best of all, I’ve yet to come across a Belgian supervisor, who, no matter his or her personal or professional frustration at the inconvenience of these policies, has questioned their validity or legality.

While there are discussions about how many aspects of Belgian influence on Brussels life and culture might be improved by learning from foreign methods of implementation or planning, during our daily life we Brussels expats sometimes forget or just take for granted the benefits of being in Belgium. The policies here may not always be, in our minds, logical, but many are far more well thought-out (and beneficial) than we will ever recognize.

I am reading a book about European business environments called Mind Your Manners by John Mole.

The book dedicates a chapter to describing the business environment that predominates in each EU country, the USA, Japan, and Russia. The author is cautiously objective in his descriptions and explanations, constantly reminding his readers that what he presents is an informal introduction that is filtered by the experience of his own network.

The book is useful to those of us working in Brussels, I think, rather than Belgium. Brussels is in Belgium, but the business environment is more European. I'm writing up my review on goodreads.com, my preferred book-sharing site.

Gyms in Brussels

2009-09-21T11:36:00.000-07:00

A post on gyms in Brussels has been requested and I aim to please.

Membership costs
Gym memberships throughout Brussels have a standard membership contract. There is usually an inscription fee, though this fee is waved in some gyms during Le Rentree . Rather like the three-month deposit required by a landlord before renting a Belgian apartment, the gym inscription fee is generally equivalent to three months subscription fee.

After you pay your inscription, you will be charged a monthly subscription fee. The subscription fee for the more middle class gyms in Brussels is usually between 60 to 80 euros. For more upper-class gyms, most notably Aspria on Avenue Louise, subscription and initiation fees can be a bit steeper. (Inscription alone at Aspria costs around 2000 euros. However, if you are a male and looking for networking opportunities, I have heard wonderful things about the Aspria Spa rooms.)

To quit any gym membership in Brussels, there is still the requirement that a subscriber send a registered letter announcing his or her termination of the contract within one month (30 days) of his or her final month of gym membership. Remember that the registered letter announcing your termination of the contract must be sent within 30 days of the day that your initial contract is going to end, NOT within 30 days of the date at which you wish for your contract to end. Contracts in Belgium are non-negotiable—you signed and you will pay.

Terminating a gym membership
If a subscriber fails to send his or her official termination letter within the required time period, fails to save proof of having mailed the registered letter within the time frame, or desires to leave the gym at an earlier date, the subscriber will be forced to pay a termination fee. To terminate a gym contract in Brussels costs, in my limited experience, about half of what you would normally pay to simply finish out the year with the gym. In some countries, this form of consumer contract might be considered entrapment. In Brussels, it’s normal, and your gym manager will be mystified that a customer might find it otherwise.

It is essential, therefore, to choose the gym that you want. When you realize that your decision to terminate your contract early may top the combined cost of your monthly payments and your inscription fee, it’s best to suck it up and stick with the gym—for the “free” showers if nothing else.

Typical gym services
All the middle class gyms offer fully equipped showers and shower gel or shampoo in a dispenser within each shower. Most gyms contain at least two tanning beds (one per gender) and offer a range of aerobics classes in the late afternoons and evenings. Classes offered usually include dance aerobics, body pump, pilates, step, body jam (some sort of Tae Bo type exercise) and spinning. The class teachers are the usual spandexed wonders of overly enthusiastic body builders with an addiction to the American top forty pop music. (What would spinning instructors do without Britney Spears?)

Gym teachers make me nervous, so I prefer to stick to the aerobic machines. Most gyms in Brussels offer television screens actually attached to the different aerobics machines. The aerobic machines include running machines, ellipticals, bike machines, and stair masters. A few older gyms still have large screen TVs arranged across the wall in front of the aerobic machines that gym customers have to share. I suggest that you skip these old gyms and opt instead for the gyms where you can watch the television show of your choice and choose your own channels for the same gym subscription fee.
Television in Brussels gyms is, understandably, more varied if you speak French or Dutch. In the evenings, it is possible to watch some English-language programmes on the Dutch channels, and there is always the BBC or CNN. There are also German, Spanish and Italian channels. In the mornings, I like MCM, the French music video channel.
Bring your own headphones—I have yet to find a Brussels gym that has had the brilliant idea of actually selling headphones at the front desk.

Brussels gyms usually have the free weight room and the machine weights. Most gyms also have several well-informed trainers who will, for a price, set up customers with their own work out routines and goals.
Don’t forget to wipe down the machines after using them—it’s more than polite, it’s sanitary.

If, instead of joining a gym, you just want to take classes, this is usually possible. You can usually buy a punch pass, giving you so many classes for a specific price (usually the cost of a month-long gym subscription). You can also buy a punch pass for a set number of gym visits if you're in town for just a short while and don't want to have to worry about your termination letter.

Swimming
If you’re looking for a swimming pool, I recommend the Health City at the Virje Universiteit Brussels (the VUB, Brussels’ Flemish university). You can find a further list of pools here. Be sure to see what each pool’s different hours include. Certain pools have reserved times for lap swimming and separate times for more recreational swimming / family swimming.
On a side note, as a former YMCA swim instructor, I am not overly impressed with the Belgian swimming instructors that I have met thus far. Among them, I have noticed a lot of focus on form but not a lot of focus on independent swimming. But I’ll be the first to admit that I’m biased towards the YMCA/Red Cross swimming skill levels. They worked well enough for Michael Phelps and the several other successful American swimmers. Let’s leave the Belgians tennis.

What to wear
I wear old sweats and ancient T-shirts to work out. While I am not alone in this at my gym, I suspect that my decision is not the most popular. Many of the women at my gym who are not North American wear more trendy gym clothes made of a stretchable material. However, there are a number who wear the Jennifer Lopez-inspired pants suit, a cross between casual-trendy that makes the North Americans at the gym feel less conspicuous. The men also wear a variety of styles, from huge old sweats to very fitted spandex. No one stares at anyone--Brussels is simply too international to care what you wear to your regular work out, which is nice.

What to bring
While many gyms provide “sweat towels” for a euro a piece, it’s cheaper to bring your own. Bring your own headphones—don’t expect the gyms to sell these.

Hours
Outside of the super-expensive Aspria (open at 5.00), most gyms open at 7.00 weekdays (or just after 7) and close at 22.00. During the weekends or holidays, the hours are usually 10.00 to 17.00, or the gym is closed.

Specific gyms
I choose my gym based upon location, so I've had as many gyms as I've had apartments.

I had an overall pleasant experience with Passage Fitness First. I had some slight trouble terminating my year-long contract when I found a less expensive gym (with personal TVs built into the machines—joy!). Passage Fitness mislaid or never reported my termination letter—but since I still had the original letter's receipt--you have to pay extra to post a registered letter--I avoided a fine. Passage Fitness has locations all over Brussels. The most “ex-pat” Passage Fitness is the gym by the Arts Loi Metro Stop. There is also a "Ladies Only" Passage Fitness on Avenue Louis, just past Avenue Vleurgatse. This Passage Fitness offers classes for children during the classes for their mothers, which is quite nice.

As a student, I joined Health City at the VUB because I got a huge discount.

I also very much like Silhouette at the Metro Louise stop. It’s only 500 euros for the year—Silhouette waves the initiation fee during Le Rentree. Plus, the gym manager there, a Moroccan / Belgian man, is absolutely amazing. He speaks fluent French, English, Arabic, some Spanish, and Dutch. He remembers all his customers’ names, greets you by name in your preferred language as you arrive, and offers free health advice based upon your preferred health regime. He runs a clean, well-stocked gym that only runs out of paper towels or soap when he is not in the building.

For more gyms, you can see this website here.

Poland comes to Place Flagey

2009-09-18T08:55:00.000-07:00

There will be a number of artists from Poland performing on Flagey Square following weekend, some of them from Krakow - my home city. I'm sure they will make me proud therefore I want to share info about those events - maybe some of you will find it interesting and will be willing to join.

have a look here: http://www.whereistheking.eu/default_en.htm

all events are free of charge, only some of them limited in places, so you need to confirm your presence to this address:
monika.madej@umwm.pl
or
bruxelles@malopolska.mw.gov.pl

I'm going to be there for Kroke concert - if you like klezmer music, it's MUST see type of band:)

Embarrassment in Belgium

2009-09-07T00:32:00.000-07:00

I have three stories.

The first involves an American from Miami. She rode Belgian public transit for free for two years. After 22 months, she was caught free-loading by a STIB (the Belgian equivalent of the transportation police). She protested loudly, claiming she had a ticket but had forgotten it, that she left it at home. She threw a mini-fit in the metro, allowing others to escape without getting frisked for a ticket. In the end, she had to pay an 80 euro fine, but, as she put it, “eh, 22 months of travel for 80 euros—still cheaper to cheat than be honest, in my opinion.”

The second involves an angle-faced Canadian (the “nicer” Americans). A Canadian rode public Belgian transport for free for several months. He was asked by a STIB for a ticket. He feigned ignorance. Politely, he watched in (false) astonishment as the STIBs walked him through how the orange ticket machine works. He smiled gratefully as the STIB helped him buy his first “Jump Pass”, a ticket that would give him ten hours of public transportation in Brussels for the price of 11.50 euros, enough time to cover his “short vacation in Belgium”. He apologized for causing trouble, and the STIBs told him that he was very lucky that they weren’t going to fine him.

The last involves a Belgian. He visited Brussels from an external Belgian city, his home. This Belgian purchased his ticket for the Brussels metro. An incredulous Canadian and former Miami resident asked him “Why?” The Belgian explained then about the embarrassment. He didn’t want to be embarrassed by getting caught.

The Americans laughed. Belgians are notorious among Brussels expats for their conformity and fear of embarrassment. According to stereotypes, Belgians hate to be the recipient of “bad” attention. Embarrassment in Belgium to a Belgian is bad. Very, very bad. A Belgian would never argue with a STIB. He wouldn’t have to. He’d have bought his ticket. To be openly caught cheating in front of one’s fellow Belgians is just too horrible. It does not matter if this Belgian is not from Brussels and rarely visits the city. It is unimportant that his companions, regular freeloaders off the public transit, found his forthright purchase of a ticket ludicrous and chose not to copy his honesty. The Belgian did not criticize the. He just repeated that he did not want to risk being caught cheating in a simple, “straightforward” purchase, he said. “It would be just too embarrassing.”

The lady from Miami laughed as the Belgian bought and validated his ticket at the Brussels metro stop. “I don’t understand the Belgian fear of ‘making a scene’”, she snickered with an air of American superiority. “I’ll make a scene whenever I can get something out of it. What do I care if it makes other people uncomfortable?” She scoffed, “I’m not easily embarrassed.”

The Belgian shook his head. “You misunderstand what I mean by embarrassment.”

“Cheating is very common in Belgium,” the Belgian explained, “but it is all done legally.” He went on, “We save our receipts. We hire accountants. If we work from home—if we just answer work emails from home, we count our electricity as a work-related cost, so our electricity is tax deductible. We drive to work, so our car, our gas, and our oil are all work-related—that is, tax deductible. My office is my home, which is even better. My toilet paper is an office expense—tax deductible. This is how I save money.” He scoffed, “Not by riding the tram for free.” He pocketed his ticket. “If I do some work on this trip—let’s say pick up some books related to my field—this trip AND the books could be tax deductible.”

The angle-faced Canadian whistled. “And I thought I was working the system.”

Caveat Emptor

2009-09-07T00:27:00.000-07:00

The Belgian Ombudsmen (Ombudsdienst) for Internet consumers....

For Americans, talking to Belgian customer service is reminiscent of attempting to claim health care benefits in our home country. There is a sense of futility that has invaded both those requesting the service and those offering it.

It’s a bit like voting in Belgium—it’s illegal not to vote, so everyone votes. It’s expected for a company to offer some kind of customer service, so everyone offers some form of customer service. But in Belgium, both voting and serving the paying public are mere matters of form. Just because you do it doesn’t imply you mean it.

Thus in Belgium, customer service is often confused with customer therapy. If you, as a customer, have the money and the time, you can call and speak to kind, clueless customer service representatives. With GPS-like voices, the representatives whisper polite phrases claiming to “understand your emotions” and “feel your frustration”. They will then carefully remind you that, really, the power to change is yours alone. They just can’t help you.

Rather than waste too much time on the phone, waste just enough time to get an address. Then send a clear letter to that address describing your grievance. Mention the Belgian Ombudsmen for internet consumers rights in Belgium (yes, s/he exists). Say one or two words about “Test Achats”, a formidable Belgian customer service organization. Request a response and include your telephone number. Let them call you.

Mobistar customer service

2009-08-31T14:12:00.000-07:00

From flandersnews.be "A comparative study of prices in 8 countries reveals that Belgium is 3 or 4 times more expensive (depending on the type of subscription) than the Netherlands for example, which came out the least expensive in most cases. ... At the moment only Proximus, Mobistar and Base are active in Belgium."

Mobistar over-charged me. Or so I thought.

I spent two hours searching for an Internet complaints email on the Mobistar website (using Mobistar’s over-priced Internet). All I found was a small form where my “complaint” was limited to a 140 letter subject line. I could Twitter my complaint, but I could not explain or voice it.
After trying their customer service line 7 times using my phone minutes, for which I had to pay, I was cut off twice and told that my gsm number was “invalid” three times—ironic as I was using the invalid number at the time of the call. I went to the store where I originally purchased their services. The Mobistar saleslady from the store was able to get a female customer service representative on the line immediately (ironic). The rep informed me that I had signed a contract that allowed Mobistar to charge an obscene amount for an incredibly limited and sketchy (at best) Internet connection. I asked to break that contract.

I was told it was cheaper to switch to a different contract and then never use my Internet than it was to break my original contract. The rep cautioned that then I would have to remember to send a letter to cancel the service within thirty days of the original contract’s end. No, the service could not be cancelled automatically, and no, not by Internet, and no, I couldn’t send the letter until 9 months from now. “Within thirty days of signing the original contract,” she explained. You see, I’ve only had the Internet “service” for three months, one of which I was barely in Brussels. Yet it’s cost me more than a month’s rent.

When I explained that I had been honest about my online ignorance, limited French, and lack of legal experience to the Mobistar salesperson, but that he had not been honest with me about what I was getting in the contract, the woman verbally shrugged. It was unfortunate, she admitted, that I had been duped by a slick salesman representing Mobistar. She even admitted that this type of thing seemed to happen a lot. But it was not, she repeated, Mobistar’s concern. A direct quote: “Mobistar is not responsible for what a [Mobistar] salesman says”, only the contract that I signed.

After an hour of her “understanding” me but not addressing how I was going to have to pay a mint to Mobistar for services that would not be rendered, she finally let me speak to her supervisor, a man I’ll call “N”.

N came on the phone and actually chastised me for wasting his colleague’s time. Apparently, a customer calling with a complaint wastes the time of busy customer service representatives. He then proceeded to talk over me, criticizing me for refusing to stop talking when he wanted to talk. Of course, I was already feeling a bit dumb for being duped by a Mobistar salesman no doubt paid on customer commission rather than customer retention (a common Belgian business practice). N told me that I should have read the contract, that Mobistar (once again, a direct quote) “is not responsible for what a [Mobistar] salesman promises a customer”. You can get in but there’s no guarantee that you can get out.

“It is your job to read the contract,” he practically yelled over my protest that, perhaps, a salesperson’s company must deliver what is sold, “you just want something for free!” He then threatened to hang up. On me. His “customer”. Who had paid for my Internet “services” in full and now just wanted to stop paying for what was poor “service”.

It’s humiliating enough to realize that you’ve been duped. It’s doubly humiliating to have a witness—one that can’t believe that you bought the “magic beans”. It’s worse when that witness is from the same farm that manufactures those magic beans. I could almost hear N chuckling to himself, “we got another one”. To have N 1) telling me that I was stupid, easily duped and 2) threatening to hang up on me, made me really, really angry. N is getting a letter.

Belgium is not well known for selling services outside of Belgium—and we foreigners living here know why. In this tiny country, where corporate cronyism masquerades as socialism and where rude customer service personnel feel comfortable ridiculing paying customers to their face (rather than over a coffee with friends like the customer service personnel in any decently fair free market economy), this sort of behaviour is acceptable. Making contracts that trap customers and encouraging salespersons to exploit a client’s ignorance and then setting up a service line that laughs at the client’s naiveté could only happen here.

So I guess I’ll have to continue to pay Mobistar for…my ignorance and their amusement.

But beware Mobistar CEOs and employees (have you seen the Mobistar CEO’s house? It’s huge!) Things are changing here. Foreigners have arrived in Brussels, and we have lived in places where salespeople are honest because it behooves them to be so, where companies stand behind what their salespeople promise, and where customer service lines are to service the customers rather than entertain the customer service representatives.

The oppressed consumers of Belgium will be liberated by whiny, winging, stupid and indignant foreign customers like myself. One day, N’s children will appreciate my efforts--even if N never does.

Shopping in Brussels

2009-08-22T10:04:00.000-07:00

My DVD rental place, infamous for its apathetic customer service, has decided not to accept copper coins as a means of exchange. Only "gold, silver, or paper, and no bankcontact.... .... .... merci."

After three visits, I remain unable to discover who is responsible for this decision. I want to articulate to this decision-maker that,until I no longer receive change in copper from other stores where I purchase things, this store cannot refuse to accept the coins. "See, money is a communal thing," I explained in pleasant tones and poor French to the bored Frank-o-phone behind the DVD sales counter. "To make a decision like this sans checking with everyone, well," I chuckled, "defeats the whole purpose of money."

So until I am no longer given copper coins, until the EU makes a unilateral law abolishing all use of copper money within the single market, all stores and their employees are forced, by the European Union and not by me, to accept copper money as a means of exchange. (And no, I did not try to pay for the rental completely in copper coins, although even if I had, I would still have been exercising what is my European economic right.)

"You see," I dropped the change on to the counter. The DVD employee refused to accept it manually. "I even counted out 2.50 Euros, the exact amount, so you don't have to." In other words, I, the demanding American, am willing to compromise with the condescending Belgian "customer service representative". Now it was her turn. "Chop chop".

She eyed the copper coins angrily, shook her head and sighed. She gave me the DVD.

Shopping in Brussels is absurdly inconvenient. It's not just the timing. Finding a store that is open when you are not working is the easy part. (To do so, make your lunch hour later than two-thirty or earlier than twelve. This way, your lunch break does not coincide with the lunch break of the hard-working customer service personnel found in most Brussels business establishments. Alternatively, you can rush out of work early--between 17.30 and 18.00 is best--to make it to the store before the store closes, usually at 18.00. Be aware that in many Brussels retail establishments, the staff often begins closing up shop at 17.45 or so).

Once you've made it into a store, things can get tricky. Some staff in certain Brussels stores have no interest in customers. They have no interest in how a customer managed to side-step their inconvenient hours. They have no admiration for a customer's ability to make it to their store on a non-Saturday. A customer is a nuisance. Such staff cannot wait for the customer to go away. Do not expect any spontaneous help from such staff. And never ever ask such staff to help a customer.

As a customer in Brussels, you must be proactive. Be the driving force behind the transaction. Be sweet, be frank, be charming if you can, but get what you want. Realise that inconvenience is your power. Be as inconvenient and demanding as possible, and the staff will give you what you want just to be rid of you.

I wouldn't try this in restaurants. Just retail stores. Never be rude to a waiter--they are between you and your food, for chrissakes.

Brussels immigration: with papers and sans papiers

2009-07-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

There are two types of Brussels immigrants. Those with papers, and those without—sans papiers, or “without papers”.

Papiers are a passport to work or study or reside in your residence of choice in Belgium. Those immigrants and migrants “sans papiers” are able to live in Belgium, but they must reside in a residence selected by the Belgian authorities.

Most sans papiers live in holding centers. In Brussels, such a centre is the Petit Château near the Yser Metro Stop. The Château is across from Bruxelles les bains, where each summer the city hosts a faux beach next to the canal.

At the Château, men, women, solitary children and families are separated into different holding blocs. The sans papiers are then told to wait and not to work (though many do “in the black”) while the Belgian authorities evaluate each sans papiers applicant’s respective right for papiers.

Belgian law provides sans papiers applicants with lawyers to aid them in their applications for papers. Most of the free lawyers are fairly inexperienced law students. Those sans papiers with black market jobs often choose to hire more experienced lawyers to process more explicit claims faster.

Inside the holding centres, the sans papiers are told to follow house rules and not to work while they wait for legal status to be determined. Each immigrant group or individual is given a key to a personal room or dormitory, a bit like students at a university (or souls in the Catholic version of purgatory).

Children are required to attend school. Adults are provided with a basic allowance. As noted, adults are not legally permitted to work-which means that most get jobs on the black market. Belgian volunteers provide after school and evening French, Dutch and activity classes for the House inhabitants during the autumn and winter.

House rules state that a person loses their dorm room if gone from the Château for more than two nights. A disappearance of more than two nights suggests that the respective sans papiers applicant has decided to withdraw his or her (or their) application.

No one at the Château follows the immigrants around, outside of ensuring that someone is occupying each allocated dormitory room. Processing papers in the Belgian state for a sans papiers applicant can take anywhere from one year to ten years, so it makes little sense to be overtly strict with the waiting immigrants. Who knows how long the related authorities and the sans papiers will be work/waiting together?

Once the papers have been processed, an immigrant is then either with papers or refused papers. A refusal can be followed up by an appeal to be reconsidered. This means more time in the Château for the immigrant individual or family. Alternatively, those officially refused papers are told to leave the Château and then to remove themselves from the Schengen Area.

Which, of course, most don’t.

But at least they’ve made it out of the Château.

I'm mad.

2009-06-29T14:36:00.000-07:00

Just back from dinner.

I’m mad.

So I’m blogging.

Get ready for a rant disguised as a lecture.

In Brussels, I recently had an argument with a cosmopolitan Nordic that I had met only once before. The discussion started just before a group dinner. It began with a question directed at me early in our conversation, followed by several Scandinavian witticisms.
Did Americans really impeach President Bill Clinton for getting a blowjob from a willing intern? Felled by fellatio, how funny. No European public would ever dare drag a politician’s private parts out for public discussion. Impeaching a president for lying about a
blowjob. Honestly. Silly Americans, puritanical pirates, declaring mutiny on a leader for an act that had nothing to do with his position (his political position). Wink, wink.

My first reaction was irritation. My irritation had nothing to do with the topic. I was irritated by the tone.

To say that Clinton’s impeachment was not a smart or a stupid national obsession for the American public at the time that it occurred is not a topic that offers much real discussion. I simply believe that it’s not my place to determine what is or isn’t worth national scrutiny—nor is it my Nordic friend’s.

What’s significant to a national constituency is significant to that national constituency. Period. What one country considers important may strike certain of members of the concerned country as well as those external to the country as ridiculous or backwards or silly. But that does not negate the issue’s overall importance to the nation.

National name-calling, or asking a random citizen from the country how his or her fellow citizens can be so “silly” is a bit off-putting, whether or not the person asking the question has a point outside of demonstrating how worldly (and wordy) he or she is.

That isn’t to say a citizen or a non-citizen can’t judge national priorities. If anything, that’s our job as members of the human race—to judge and criticize the concerns of our various human communities. But judge them with interest, not disdain. Dissent, but don’t dismiss. Look to understand why a national constituency considers a particular event significant. Express surprise and even horror, sure, but don’t blow off the blow up over the blowjob (ha ha, I’m wordy too) as an inexplicable glitch in the American national psyche.

Or, if you do, don’t ask me to join in.

A better question would have been what do Americans expect from their politicians? That is a question that can lead to a dissection of WHY Clinton’s sex life became national headlines. That’s a question that opens up several possible conversations about political strategy, electioneering, the mainstream media, American culture, history—we could go on for days.

Cosmopolitan people know that national communities, regional communities, religious communities, ethnic and economic communities—any type of community is going to produce community caricatures. Americans are hypocritical hyper-moralists, Italians wouldn’t know good governance if it ran for Miss Italy much less Prime Minister, the French are too busy striking to get any work done, and the Nordics mistake their geographical position for a sign of social superiority (Silly Americans!). But the sign of a true international is one that recognizes that these caricatures are the products of a myriad of historical, social, economic, and structural forces. Let’s not collapse these forces into cosmopolitan cultural jokes meant to (wink, wink) establish the cultural hierarchy at dinner.

Place Luxembourg

2009-06-26T23:26:00.000-07:00

Happy hour starts at 17.00 at Place Lux, which circles round the West entrance to the European Parliament.

The European Parliament is located a block or so away from its more powerful (if less democratic) superiors, the Commission and theCouncil. It is labyrinth of glassy facades that hosts the 785 Members of the European Parliament, their staffs, their staffs’ staff, and an ever-expanding army of interns.

Rumor has it that despite the multitude employed by the Parliament, the buildings are so expansive that even several interns have their own individual offices. It is possible to pass an entire day inside the Parliament without once interacting with another human being off-line. At some point, some of the more tiny offices will be converted to closets, I’m sure, but until then…

By 18.00 at Place Lux, the beautiful young Eurocrats are sufficiently soused to start flirting with each other. Flirtations border on the intellectually inappropriate, but in Place Lux, it would be impolite to accuse anyone of impolitic behavior. Politics is rarely served straight—there’s always a shot of sex to take the edge off.

After the inexpensive excess of Happy Hour, men with enough money then buy bottles of over-priced champagne and hand out glasses to bevies of beautiful young bureaucrats. The point of the champagne, one drunk dilettante from the Mediterranean informed me, is to hook a date for the night. “One of the girls drinking with me will probably need someone to take her home tonight,” he explained. “Quid pro quo.”

Ralph’s is the youngest, hippest, and most crowded bar, located at the far edge of the Place and conveniently next to the Fortis ATM,which always has a line. Whatever the weather, Ralph’s puts a second bar just outside the bar's front door to accommodate all the people that can’t cram inside the bar itself. The music at Ralph's is too loud to encourage any real conversation. Instead, most people mix and mingle, screaming greetings at as many people as they can. Next-door to Ralph’s are more quiet bars that stay busy sopping up the overflow from Ralph’s. Across the Place is the bar Fat Boy’s, where native English speakers meet to watch football (American soccer) or rugby, depending on the season.

Late into the evening, taxis and buses line up along the Place to deposit party goers and pick up the people too pooped to party anymore. It’s a nightly ritual that makes one wonder how the Parliament employees that are the Place's most ardent patrons are able to wake up the next morning.

“Practice”, my Mediterranean friend informed me with a wink.“Champagne?”

How to get FREE legal advice in Belgium

2009-06-13T05:43:00.000-07:00

I have stumbled across the golden digits.

Yes, in Belgium, a land dedicated to minimizing the economic (if not always the socio-economic) distance between the classes, a free legal aid service is provided. I am kicking myself for only figuring this out NOW.

Once again, for free legal advice, there are three hot-lines available to anyone with a gsm.

Any weekday (Monday through Friday, or Lundi au Vendredi, or Maandag t/m Vrijdag), call the Telebalie

between the hours of 14.00 to 17.30, a person in need of legal advice can call

For Dutch (and of, course, English--all Dutch-speakers in Belgium speak perfect English) call 02/511 50 45. Speak clearly, explain your situation, and receive clear, polite, and helpful advice.

For French speakers, call 02/511 54 83
Once more, for free legal advice: Telebalie (+32) 02 511 50 45 or E-mail : bjb@baliebrussel.be

between the hours of 16.30 and 18.00, call "Loyers" (appropriately named, "Loyers" is Lawyers in French). Do not be deceived by the linguistic bias in the name. Lawyers answering this telephone service speak French, Dutch, English AND German, from what I understand. The number is 070/23 33 03.

Caveat (Isn't there always when it comes to lawyers?): You may have to call several times. These are popular services, so the phone lines can be quite crowded. An actually lawyer (! Not a secretary, not a jerk looking to profit from your lack of information, but a real lawyer, an expert in Belgian law, giving you non biased, practical information for FREE)--an actual lawyer will answer your phone call within two to three tries, in my limited experience.

Hope this information gives you the kind of joy that it gave me. Or maybe I just need to get out more. I guess I will have to go to more Aperos Urbains, evenings of communal alcoholism, er, communal gatherings during which one may take alcohol, held throughout the city every Friday night during the summer. Here's to Brussels!

the "Home" documentary, available free online till Saturday

2009-06-10T06:35:00.000-07:00

I am currently tracking down how to get official help filling in my tax forms. After spending some time and all my phone minutes speaking with the very nice tax office (025725757...press 1 three times for a Flemish speaker with perfect English), I discovered that the 38 Souverain office listed as an "aid in filling out tax forms" office in a letter that I received from the Ministere de Finance may in fact be a myth. There is no 38 Souverain (Blvd.) and the nice Flemish at the tax office could not explain why not. They did direct me to a new office, Blvd. du Jardin Botanique 50, phone number 026390280. To get your "tax help office", call the tax office central (025725757...press 1 three times for a Flemish speaker with perfect English), offer up your citizen number and your region (for me, Ixelles), and they will tell you your "tax help office", open between 9 and 1 weekdays to aid you in filling out your taxes.

Meanwhile, I have an eco-friend who recommended a good documentary to me. She usually gets things right, and this video is available on YouTube for free until Saturday. After that, I suppose you'll have to search for someone who re-uploaded it to YouTube under an alias and feel generally immoral for watching a film that you "should" be paying to see. Here it is, legally free of charge till Saturday...

(The letter from my eco-friend):
I've just been introduced to a new documentary called "Home" by a colleague. She gave RAVE reviews and apparently it's breaking records for spectators on the internet and television. They had thousands of people show up in France to watch an outdoor screening in front of the Eiffel Tower last week! I haven't seen it but it's a film about ecology and environment, so I'm sure it will be interesting.

It's only available for FREE online until this Saturday, from what I hear, so please check it out before then if you can. It's originally in French, so you may be able to find the French versions, but I've copied the link to the English version below.

The link is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU

the "BreXpat" call for proposals to unite Brussels Expats

2009-06-08T06:43:00.000-07:00

Pass it on, please...

Dear Madam, Dear Sir,

The King Baudouin Foundation just launched 'BreXpat', a call for projects that aim to bring expats and others inhabitants of Brussels together.

As the capital of Europe, Brussels became home to a mixture of nationalities. The European institutions are employing about 40 000 Europeans from all countries of the Union. Some 20 000 lobbyists, 1 400 journalists and over 5 000 diplomats are active around the institutions. Brussels counts almost 300 regional representatives, 2 500 other international institutions, more than 2 000 international companies and 150 international law firms.

However, the various population groups in Brussels don’t always have the opportunity to connect with each other. Because of the socioeconomic advantageous position of most expats, the segregation of this group is seldom raised as an issue, even though a great potential for enriching interactions exists between this group and the other inhabitants of Brussels.

Initiatives of citizens and organisations in Brussels can according to the King Baudouin Foundation bridge the gap that exists between expats and others inhabitants of Brussels. We believe that a multiplication of small initiatives can have a substantial impact on the larger picture.

The King Baudouin Foundation therefore launches for the third time a call to expats and Brussels based individuals and organisations: if you have an idea to bring expats and others together, you are invited to submit an application for financial support.

More information can be found here: http://www.kbs-frb.be/call.aspx?id=209650&LangType=1033

Kind regards,

Nele Verbruggen

Programme Officer
King Baudouin Foundation
Brederodestraat 21, B-1000 Brussels
T: +32-2-549 02 43
verbruggen.n@kbs-frb.be
www.kbs-frb.be

How to find a flat or apartment in Brussels

2009-06-04T08:02:00.000-07:00

I’m not acquainted with the housing market, or how to purchase rather than rent a residence, so can’t share how to do that at the moment. If you’ve purchased a home in Brussels or Belgium before, please feel free to share how to go about buying a house or apartment in Brussels if you are not Belgian. There is no way I could afford to do it, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t blog/dream about it.

The hunt for apartments in Brussels is a lot like speed dating. You cover a lot of ground in a small amount of time in hopes of finding the perfect rental.

First, you research the properties, the neighborhoods, and the potential roommates. This can be done online or, as is more traditionally Belgian, offline. Next, you set up appointments to see the property and meet the property’s proprietor or the proprietor’s proxy. During the meeting, you have about 15 to 30 minutes with the proprietor to establish general expectations for both sides. Then, you spend the next few weeks mentally comparing your rental options. Finally, you make the selection and sign a contract.

The Belgians: It is traditional in Belgium for a young couple to purchase an old, preferably hollowed-out house and then proceed to renovate their “new” house for the rest of their lives. There is a Flemish proverb that each Belgian is “born with a brick in the stomach”. This brick symbolizes the first stone of the Belgian’s future home. Belgians see owning a residence as an essential sign of adulthood and maturity. Renting or living in a town council home when above a certain age in Belgium is perceived as sign of social failure within much of Belgian society. To avoid this, Belgian parents often sponsor their adult children in a bank loan to purchase their first (and final) house before the Belgian kid turns thirty.

Belgian couples don’t get married to demonstrate commitment, they renovate. Marriage would be too easy. A marriage can be dissolved, but, in Belgium, renovation will never finish.
(Unless the couple hires Eastern Europeans to do the renovation “in the black”, without paying for the proper building permits and construction taxes. Then, provided the neighbors don’t turn the couple into the Belgian police for side-stepping Belgian national laws, the home renovations may actually finish before the couple dies of old age.)

The non-Belgians:

For those of us that prefer to outsource our plumbing problems and settle for a rental, this post is for you.

Prior to the hunt: Prior to initiating the hunt for a rental, it’s good to plan to visit or stay in Belgium or Brussels while searching. There are several inexpensive “aparthotels” in Brussels, where home-hunters can pay relatively cheap rates to rent a semi-temporary fully furnished apartment complete with Internet (for online home-hunting) and cable TV. It's easy to stay here while you search for more permanent accomadations.

Belgian Proprietor-renter relationship: Before you start your apartment search, it’s good to know how the proprietor-renter relationship in Brussels works, both legally and "en effet" (in fact). Once again, this is according to my and my acquaintances' experiences, so please comment if your experience is otherwise.

When signing a contract in Belgium for anything, from housing to employment, it’s essential to read and sometimes even write at least some of your own contract. The contract in Belgium is the source of all the power and powerlessness in the relevant relationship.

With housing, think of the rental contract as a prenuptial agreement for a guaranteed divorce. To make sure that eventual divorce will go as smoothly as possible, some basic prenuptial guidelines include:

The renter will promise to return the apartment un-damaged (so the renter with the proprietor should look for and record with SIGNED PHOTOS any pre-existing damage to the property prior to signing the rental contract).

It is possible to hire a professional to go over the apartment with you and the proprietor, but this can be expensive (I got a quote of around 120 euros). Most proprietors are willing to go over the property with the renter.
As a renter, you should be polite, but insist on signed photos of damages even if the proprietor promises to remember the hole in the cabinet or the water damage to the bathroom floor. Proprietors can get mean at the end of a rental contract, so it’s best to avoid any unpleasantness about “damage caused by renter” by having the signed photos from the beginning of the rental contract.

The renter will return the apartment at the agreed-upon date.

If you want to leave your apartment prior to the end of the dates specified in the rental contract, you can expect to pay what amounts to apartment alimony, unless you can find a proprietor-approved replacement renter.
A one-year rental contract requires the renter leaving early to pay a month’s additional rent for breaking the contract, if no other renter can be found to take on the remainder of the contract.
A three-year rental contract requires the renter breaking the contract to pay three months additional rent for breaking the contract, if no other renter can be found to agree to complete the contract. And so on...

The renter will pay "charges".

Rent is included in the rental description. "Charges" may or may not be included. "Charges" cover everything from electricity to gas and water to the cost of cleaning the common properties of the rental space, such as the stairwells and front hall.
Many "Charges" are estimated, meaning that if you use more gas or electricity than was initially estimated, you will be charged additional "Charges" at the end of one year. If you use less gas or water than estimated, however, you should recieve some money back from the proprietor.

The renter will pay a Guarantee.

A Guarantee requires the renter to put the financial equivalent of two to three months rent into a bank account that, to be accessed, requires the signature of both proprietor and renter. This is the way in which the proprietor and the renter can guarantee that a rental contract is dissolved to the mutual satisfaction of both. Neither the renter nor the proprietor can access the money until both sides have agreed to end the rental contract. Part of this agreement will include how to end the rental contract (that is, does the renter owe the proprietor money for damages or for a leaving a contract early? If so, how much?).
All interest earned by the “Guarantee account” goes to the renter. The guarantee is set up by the renter and the renter’s bank—when the renter goes to the bank to set up the account, the bank will give the renter a form for the proprietor to fill out and sign.
Some proprietors do not require the Guarantee and ask only for two month’s rent. The proprietor is to give this rent back to the renter upon the completion of the rental contract, provided the renter adhered to the contract. Agreeing to pay the Guarantee to the proprietor rather than the bank can save the renter some paperwork. However, it can be more difficult to get the full Guarantee back from the proprietor upon the completion of the rental contract. Not to mention, the proprietor will not pay the renter any interest on the Guarantee, whereas the bank will. A Guarantee overseen by the bank is a more equitable way for both renter and proprietor to dissolve their rental relationship.

Proprietors and renters are not often very friendly with each other in Belgium. Belgian law stipulates that if a renter stops paying rent, the proprietor cannot kick out the delinquent renter until three months "sans rent" have passed. So Belgian proprietors are naturally suspicious of foreigners, who can move in and then move out of the country after leaving the Belgian proprietor with a damaged, un-paid for rental property. This natural suspicion can lead to some complicated rental relationships. Stick to the contract (and to Belgian law) to avoid any problems.

Initiate the hunt:

There are two methods for initiating the search for a flat or an apartment in Brussels: online and offline.

Online: There are online resources for viewing apartments, sites for roommate exchanges in several languages, and email lists that send around new requests for roommates or housing. Popular places where you can narrow down rental possibilities according to size, location, and price are Immoweb and Vlan.be. There are also listed rooms and flats available here or here. For roommates, you can try the Brussels CraigsList or an Expat site. Rommates are called "collocataires" in Brussels, where shared housing or apartments are common.

Size varies between a full apartment and a one room studio. Sometimes, with a studio or a "collocataire", shared student housing, you will share a kitchen and bathroom with other singles. Location is nicest when next to a Metro stop or other artery of public transportation. The Brussels Capital region has 19 Arrondissements with different area codes and cost of living, all reflected in the rental price.
Price is anywhere from 300 euros to 2000 euros, charges included. Prices are going up in my experience. I found that my initial sh*thole, er, first student housing in Brussels had increased from 300 to 350 in monthly rent between 2006 and 2009. Price also depends upon whether an apartment is furnished or not. Furnished flats cost proprietors more taxes, so most flats are advertised as "unfurnished". However, previous renters may have left or be willing to leave behind furniture, so don't discount a flat that is merely advertised as "unfurnished". It may actually come with furniture--"muebles" in French, I think.

Traditional home-hunting in Brussels is offline. A home-hunter picks his or her preferred neighborhood and looks for the bright orange “A Louer/Te huur” signs in the window. The sign is always followed by a telephone number and sometimes includes a description of the rental property and its price--remember to look to see if the price includes charges.

Explore your options:

Call the proprietors of the rental properties to set up an appointment to view the different properties. Most proprietors speak a little English and all, of course, speak French. (If the proprietor is from Flanders, s/he will definitely speak English). It's easy to arrange to see an apartment or flat in the evening or on a weekend. Ask for the nearest public transportation so that you can easily find the place. Proprietors, prior to signing the contract, are incredibly accommadating and extremely polite. It's easy to re-schedule or move an appointment around.

Some proprietors rent their properties through agencies. If this is the case, you will meet an agent who will explain the rental contract expected of you. The nice thing about agencies is that there is little awkwardness in what is expected from the renter and from the proprietor. Agencies, and some proprietors, will require that you sign and pay some insurance on the rental property and for your furniture. The price depends on the quality of the property. I've paid anywhere from 70 to 250 euros in insurance fees.

Make your selection:

Choose the room/flat/studio/appartment that you want, go over the property with the proprietor and take photos of any dammaged areas, sign the contract, and set up the Guarantee.

Some lessons that I've learned in my time renting in Brussels:

you do not need to share your banking information, outside of what is related to the gaurantee and the first month's rent, with your proprietor
you do not need to show your work contract to the proprietor (Yes, I have been asked. I refused.) Your salary is none of their business.
Most proprietors set up a meeting between several potential renters at once. This saves them time and creates a competitive atmosphere where the bidding war almost always works to the proprietor's benefit. The potential renter who has the most money up front, is willing to sign the longest lease, and/or is the most "clean-looking" will get the proprietor's blessing. Don't succomb to this base trick. There are a lot of places to rent in Brussels. Sign a waiting list if you want to be considered for a popular flat, but don't sign a contract until you are certain that you want the flat (and the proprietor, who can be constantly "missing in action" when you need him or her, or can be constantly around whether you want him or her around or not.)

If you are looking to sublet your apartment or to rent a subletted apartment, you can also find such options on Expatica or via the Sublet site.

More information can be found here, on the Expatica site, or here, on the official Belgian housing site.

Okay, I'm off to see the Woody Allen play at the Bozar. Happy rental-hunting!

Place Chatelaine

2009-05-18T03:10:00.000-07:00

Place Chatelaine is a five-minute walk from where the Ch. de Vleurgat intersects with Avenue Louise. It is home to the Golden Gym and a convenience store-video rental that is part of a Brussels chain called White Night. Each Wednesday between 16.00 and 18.30, the Place hosts a small market. My favorite booth at this market is the Thai booth, which sells delicious Pad Thai, one serving for about four euros.

Place Chatelaine is home to several overpriced and trendy restaurants, cafes, and boutiques. There is also a used bookstore with a charming low-tech staff that records each book sold in pencil on loose-leaf paper. (At the same time, however, there is a cleverly concealed high-tech bookstore security system that consists of white electronic trackers inserted into the last page of every used book on the shelves. No one steals anything from this used bookstore and gets away with it.)

The bookstore has odd hours and somewhat un-used prices (in comparison with my beloved Pelle Melle, at least). The bookstore’s devoted clientele, including several wealthy ladies and gentlemen of inherited leisure, spend long afternoons shopping for multilingual literature that is, at worst, “gently worn”.

Across from the bookstore is a traiteur. The traiteur sells the same brands as the nearby grocery chain Del Haize, but for three times the Del Haize price. The traiteur has decadent late hours and is chic-ly secular, being open on Sundays. (The bookstore is not.)

During the afternoons, the residents of Place Chatelaine and its surrounding streets walk their purebred pets through the Place. Coffee shop clients can see a number of distinctive dog breeds with coats silky enough for L’Oreal commercials promenading with their proud owners.
In the evenings, un beaucoup de la crème de la crème de Bruxelloise gather at a tiny bar at the far end of the Place. The bar, appropriately named “Le Chatelaine”, as in “the Chatelaine”, is the place to see and to be seen—what the French speakers call “m’as tu vu”.

Beginning around 19.00, these esoteric elites of Brussels fill the bar and soon spill out into the Place itself. These influential individuals, City notables spanning from expensive restaurateurs, established entrepreneurs, politicians, and Brussels city bureaucrats, sip table beer and wine from tiny plastic cups while they chatter in English, Catalan, Castellano, Francais, and Italiano. Businessmen wear their most casual couture—recently this seems to consist of brand name blue pullovers and white-collared shirts. Women wear their long hair down, dress in trim business suits or skirts, and high-heels. Everyone drinks, laughs, and looks.

By 20.00, the crowd has usually grown so big that it snakes across the Place, even on rainy nights. It’s easy to drive around the Place and avoid the roadblock of tipsy pretty people, but such efficiency would defeat the purpose of the m’as tu vu. Groups and individuals with fashionable autos crawl through the crowd in front of Le Chatelaine, parting the people like the Moses of Biblical legend did the Red Sea. Brussels celebrities meander carelessly out of the way of the vehicles, nodding amicably at the people in the cool cars.

To recognize the class of the people that frequent Place Chatelaine, it may be useful to know a little city history. In Brussels, as in many places, cars have long been a symbol of success. In fact, the City of Brussels has only recently ordered the reconstruction of the Brussels Metro because, previously in Brussels, public transit was the problem of the poorer classes. The eccentric inefficiencies of the Brussels Metro, the trams, and the buses serve to highlight the importance of their historic patrons. Those whose time was valuable could afford to drive, so drive they did.

It is only with the influx of the immigrant business class from London, Japan, and North America, that it has become clear that those with enough money to purchase personal modes of transport might instead actually choose to use to patronize the public transportation.

This concept still hasn’t impacted the elite that gather at Place Chatelaine to toast the evening, many of who park their cars at the nearby Church (adding a rather religious element to the nightly pilgrimage).

This is not to suggest that Place Chatelaine is economically elitist, only that, to me, it gives a rather convincing façade of unconscious privilege.

Class, after all, is a term best defined within a specific context. As an American “mutt” of unknown and suspicious bloodline, I have been raised to think of “class” as a dirty four-letter word that unfortunately exists but should never be publicly acknowledged. Class, my mother whispered to me privately, is about substituting pedigree for breeding, mistaking a purebred appearance for real value. It is not to be appreciated.

In Chatelaine, however, I have come to recognize that “class” is a euphemism for “quality” or personal content—style worn as a symbol of inner substance. That is, my car is clean, a superior quality, comfortable, and expensive—so am I. My literature is classical, multilingual, and well read—so am I. My dinner is late, costly, and expensively labeled—so am I. My dog is a well trained terrier bred for easy urban living—so am…well, you know.

On a more macro-level, Chatelaine does demonstrate the increasing diversity of the upper socioeconomic class of Brussels, a growing group of elite Europeans. Each evening, outside Le Chatelaine, there gather Turks (socializing more in French and English than their mother tongue), Spanish, French, Belgians, some British, Germans, Greeks, Dutch, Danish, a few Nordics, Italians, and various Balkans. The pub’s patrons are a well-bred, well-educated and well-mannered mixture—a demure and exotic cocktail of Continental culture, with a few loud Americans thrown in for texture (and tension?).

In the Place, these different individuals mingle with each other—the upper class of Europe adores diversity, as long as it can pay for its own drinks. Perched on a stool at Le Chatelaine, it’s interesting to consider how these people, aside from the Americans, also form a part of what is known as the “European” class.

“European” is an esoteric, elite Brand that is not affordable to most of the persons that in reality live in Europe (heck, that live in Brussels)— persons who are, inevitably, defined by their nationality rather than their continent. (Especially when we try to apply for VISAs.)

But the patrons of Place Chatelaine live in their continent, not their countries. They are European. The “average” European found at Chatelaine speaks at least three languages fluently, unless s/he is British. The “average” European also regularly travels internationally, carries one to three degrees from a prestigious university and has a devout respect for multiculturalism and environmental policy (and a car). The average European appreciates good wine, knows how to operate chopsticks, knows who Horta and Rembrandt and Versace are and, better yet, knows from where these architects of European culture originate and has seen their original works in person.

The average European, my dear, fellow Bruxelloise, does not take the bus.

As the European institutions struggle to build a pan-European identity, the people in Place Chatelaine are decades ahead of the EU. As “Europeans”, they never question their continental credentials. They do, however, cause me to question how long it will be before the rest of the continent catches up to their European classification, and how much such a mass ascension of such class-consciousness will cost.

How to take a Career Break and get paid for it in Belgium

2009-05-08T06:19:00.000-07:00

Belgian employment law continues to remind me of a three-way marriage between State, employer, and employee.

At any time in the State of Belgium, private and public employees are legally allowed to take a sabbatical—and their employers are legally obligated to permit them to do so. And (the best part), the Belgian State is legally required to fund everything.

A sabbatical, known as a “time credit” or tijdskrediet, is the employee’s right to take a career “interruption”. During the “interruption”, the Belgian state pays the employee his or her usual salary, supplemented just a tiny bit by the employee’s employer. The employer does not pay the employee the usual salary—just the small supplement. The career break for the employee comes with a salary break for the employer.

Which is probably why the tijdskrediet is being over-used/abused by some companies at the moment.

The Problem(s) with tijdskrediet:

Firing an employee in Belgium is expensive. Employers have to pay severance fees, additional taxes, paid holidays not yet taken by the employee, etc. when they fire an employee. Belgium is a socialist state and so an employer is legally treated a bit like a bad husband divorcing his wife when laying off or firing an employee. An employer owes a fired employee “alimony” so that the employee does not experience a drop in his or her standard of living as a result of no longer having a job. The fired or laid off employee goes from being a hard-working wife to a lazy mistress who does not have to perform to get her paycheck. Belgian employers, even at this time of widespread recession, are understandably unnerved at the costs of potential lay-offs.

So private employers are turning to their own “husband”, the Belgian government, to find cheaper ways to cut employment costs. Thus, the abuse of the tijkrediet or “career interruption”—a legal right requested by the employee, a legal obligation that cannot be denied by the employer, and a legal entitlement funded largely by the Belgian government. A tijkrediet is like sending your angry wife to the Caribbean to cool off at your company’s expense. No alimony, no divorce, no problem.

Except that an awful lot of Belgian private employers, a lot of bad husbands at the same company, are using the same plan. And it’s becoming a bit expensive for the Belgian state, the company of bad husbands, to fund all those nice vacations for the employees/wives.

Such is the State of the socialist system here in Belgium.

More about the tijdskrediet itself:

In taking the tijdskrediet, the employee must accept a minor cut in salary that is based upon the employee’s salary prior to the career break. You are, after all, not working at the moment, but you expect to return to your job soon-ish.

A full career interruption, during which time an employee does not work, can last up to a year. A half-time reduction career interruption, during which time an employee works only halftime, can last slightly longer.

A 1/5th reduction career interruption, during which an employee works twenty percent, can last up to 5 years or longer. If an employee has worked for a company for twenty years OR if the employee is age 50 or older, s/he can drop to a 1/5th reduction in work load for five years OR spread the 1/5th reduction in work over the remainder of his or her career.

An employee and an employer can agree to a longer than five-year extension of the career break if they want.

Where did the tijdskrediet come from?

In a surprising twist to popular and politically incorrect Belgian stereotypes of the “lazy” Walloon and the “industrious” Flemish, this policy originated in the Belgian North. The tijdskrediet came from the government of Flanders, home to the “industrious” Flemish.

The system of “time credit” career breaks began in 1985 as a means of cycling the unemployed into the workplace. When an employee applied for a tijdskrediet, unemployed persons would take over the job for a short time in order to gain experience and a professional network and recommendations.

In 2002, the tijdskrediet changed direction.

The tijdskrediet program’s new objective became “to help Belgians achieve a better work-life balance”.

Officially, employees in need of palliative care or employees that have recently given birth (or both) were encouraged to take advantage of a tijdskrediet. Also, employees that needed to take care of sick relatives were encouraged to take advantage of the career break. The only employees that were discouraged from the programme were employees that belonged to small private companies, including the self-employed.

Up to the current recession, women that have recently given birth or men close to retirement generally asked for the tijdskrediet.

This is now changing in an ominous pattern. As the recession creeps into the Belgian economy, some companies have begun encouraging employees (and thus themselves) to take advantage of the tijdskrediet.

So.

The tijdskrediet a very Belgian custom in my American eyes, a means of avoiding the nasty and impolite practice of employment termination without causing the company undue pain. Belgian culture, in my experience, strives to neutralize obvious conflict before it creeps into confrontation. I think this may be a reflection of the country’s constant political turmoil—the cock vs. cat, Walloon v. Flanders fight that has raged for decades.

But in a polite, neutral, non-combative way. Chocolate anyone?

How to be laid off in Belgium/ How to be fired in Belgium

2009-05-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

So these days, a lot of us in the work world have recently been compelled to leave. Employees everywhere have been made unemployed. Laid off. Made redundant. Fired.

Painful, I know, but if misery loves company, than today’s climate is a good one in which to be depressed.

Temporarily. Because no recession is permanent. Good times will come again, and they’ll come faster if you start looking for them now. Meanwhile…

How to be laid off in Belgium

For those that are Recession rejects in Belgium, please know that you are among friends. I know a number of formerly employed Belgian Recession rejects that are thinking of starting a band. My friend Brynn wants to be the drummer so she can beat the sh*t out of something.

With this post, I hope to acquaint you with the process of the legal termination of employment in Belgium. Forewarned is forearmed, and you should know what your employment rights are, especially in the face of potential unemployment.

For workers still in their work probation period:

I give fair warning to those employed in Belgium and still within their probation period. You are the easiest and cheapest employees to lay-off. This means that, come crunch time, and it’s nothing personal, you will be probably be the first that the company lets go.

Within the employment probationary period, usually spanning the first six months to a year of an employment contract, termination of the contract by the employer or the employee requires only three weeks (fifteen business days) notice. After those fifteen days, all financial and legal ties are cut.

For workers out of their probation period:

For those finished with the probation period, getting fired in Belgium is not exactly terrible. Provided that an employee has passed the usual yearlong probation period, it becomes expensive and politically painful for a Belgian employer to let the employee go.

After the probation period ends, however, a Belgian employer is required to send the employee a registered letter prior to the beginning of the employee’s period of termination. It’s polite, but not required, for the employer to let the employee know that this letter is in the mail.

After receiving the letter, the employee then has three months salary guaranteed prior to the end of employment.

The employee and the employer can negotiate whether the employee just takes the money and runs (which usually happens if the termination was the result of the employee’s poor behavior)

Or the employee can work the remaining three months, receiving one full day or two half days off a week to look for a new job. This “time off” is not reflected in the employee’s salary. The employee receives full pay for less work for the employer. Instead, the employee is officially given time by his or her former employer to work on finding a new job.

Following the three-month period, the employee receives a sort of severance payment. This payment is calculated based upon the amount of time that the employee officially worked for the company and a number of additional considerations, most having to do with the incredibly complicated Belgian tax system.

Options for the Non-EU let go in Belgium:

A non-EU employee can switch his or her VISA status from a Work Permit B to a student VISA.

What any recently unemployed non-EUs wants most is that s/he finds another job.
WHEN the non-EU finds his or her new fantastic job here in Brussels, s/he can switch the old B VISA to the name of the new employer. Then the non-EU employee can begin another probation period, a probation period that will hopefully to pass into a recession-proof long-term contract.

Unemployment pay for the non-EU?

I’ve spoken with recently unemployed friends and discovered that people who have worked in Europe for over a year are entitled to unemployment benefits. Some of these benefits come the high taxes imposed on the employee while working in Europe. In general, unemployment benefits seem to average around 800 euros a month.

These benefits should be available to any and all employees within Europe with a history of having worked AS A LEGAL AND FULLY-ENTITLED EMPLOYEE in the EU for a year or more with no gaps in employment. Interns, trainees, and stagiares have no legal status. Legally-speaking, interns and stagiares do not exist in the European work world.

Be prepared.

Meanwhile, always keep your CV updated, online, and in circulation if you want to stay employed. A recession takes no prisoners. Employers are hit fast and hard when the time comes—and when an employer is hit, it’s the employees that feel the pain.

Especially if you, as a non-EU employee, are in your probation period, keep your European network well-oiled. This makes you a more valuable employee both before and after you’re hired. Brussels, especially, runs on networking. Make this networking work for you, and finding another job will require less work from you.

Caveat:
I know this post is a bit pedantic, but in my experience, it’s best to treat getting laid off with humor and hard work. If you let depression or self-pity descend, it’s a lot more difficult to dig your way back into the job market. When I was laid off, my best friend wouldn’t let me complain for more than a week or two. She told me, in not so many words, “Look, it’s too bad, but if you don’t move your ass it will only get worse.” Honestly, you’d think she works for President Obama. Too bad she’s Austrian.

A Review of the State of Government and citizenship in Belgium (and a little about the EU)

2009-04-22T02:45:00.000-07:00

For every citizen (and employee) in Belgium, there are four governments.

Individuals can belong to all four, or they can belong to one, two, or three. In Belgium, voting in each government election is not a civic right but a civic obligation. Belgian citizens are legally required to vote in every Belgian election. If a Belgian doesn’t vote, she or he is penalized with a fine.

Election days in Belgium are national holidays. This is so people will actually go and vote, rather than go to the seaside and vacation. This seems to work, as Belgium has high voter turnout rates, sometimes surpassing 90 percent in national and local elections.

The governments:

The Belgian national government is constantly in crisis. For the three years that I’ve been here, the federal government has fallen two, three, times? With each collapse, Belgians, immigrants, and migrants go for four to six month sans state level elected officials. How does this regular lack of national leaders impact the nation-state of Belgium? Well, nothing in Belgium changes and nobody in Belgium notices. Only Belgians, those that possess the citizenship of the Belgian State, participate in the formation of this national government (although everyone who works in Belgium, save those that work for the EU, pay taxes to support this on-again, off-again government).

There is Belgian local government. For me, this is the Brussels government. In Brussels, the local government charges residents 89 to 95 euros each February or March for services provided by the city of Belgium, like garbage collection, city utilities, the Commune customer service, etc. Ghent, Leuven, Charleloi, Oostende, Antwerp, etc. all sustain their own local governments with related local legislation and taxes. After living in Brussels for five years, I can participate in my local government. This doesn’t guarantee me the opportunity to receive Belgian citizenship, but it would allow me to participate in the politics of my local community.

The local taxes for Brussels are rather expensive, according to a colleague of mine living in Antwerp. Of course, I find people from Antwerp to be generally dismissive of all societies external to Antwerp, which, according to my colleague, is where God would live, if God existed. (Antwerpians have a bit of a superiority complex. The people of Antwerp call us Bruxellois kiekefretters or “chicken eaters”, after what was historically the preferred food of Brussels—which makes me wonder as to the origin of Brussels sprouts.)

Then there are the Belgian linguistic governments: French, Flemish, and the minority German language government. The Belgian French, Flemish, and German governments are the source of local linguistic pride as well as a strong source of the national linguistic antagonism sustained between the historically Flemish-speaking community in Northern Belgium and the historically French-speaking community in Southern Belgium.

The linguistic governments are often the main cause of the Belgian federal government’s failures. The French-language and Flemish-language political officials never stop quarreling or inciting conflict between their two communities as they vie for greater power at the Belgian national level. The pro-French speakers, the Wallonian nationalists, represent themselves as cocks (as in roosters--what did you think it meant?) and the Flemish speakers of Flanders represent themselves as lions.

Brussels is the biggest baby of the bitter language rivalry. Brussels Belgians are predominantly French-speaking, but they live on the Flemish side of the national linguistic and geographic divide.

Brussels is also frequently cited as the only reason that the Flemish and the French communities have not split Belgium into two separate countries. The general Belgian consensus is that if one community can’t have Brussels, then the other can’t either. So I guess Belgium is here to stay as long as Brussels is. Because the language rivalry is so entrenched in Belgium and is especially strong in Brussels, English is the default “polite” neutral language in Brussels. Which is good for me and several other internationals living and working in Brussels.

The German-speaking community is too tiny to be controversial. This community is located along the German border of Belgium. Outside of having the right to request all official documents in German rather than French or Dutch, the Germans are a relatively peaceful and uncontroversial Belgian community.

All in all, the linguistic rivalry may die within a few more Belgian generations. The students in Belgium today tend to treat the linguistic divide like a good natured football rivalry--cock versus cat. The poor politicians that once profitted from linguistic popularism, frequently pitting one linguistic community against the other to earn a few extra votes, may soon have to come up with a new form of rabble rousing.

There is, of course, also Belgian representation at the European-level government.
The European Parliament is holding elections in June. The elections are for European-level Belgian representation. Voting districts are local rather than national. Representation of European citizens in the European Parliament is parceled out according to population, not necessarily nationality—a bit like the US House of Representatives.

Non-Belgian EU nationals living in Belgium will not be able to vote for the Belgian representation to the EU Parliament. They can go to their embassies and consulates, or mail their votes home to their own local areas, within their own nations.

Non-Belgian EU nationals, by the way, abound in Brussels , contributing to the power of English as the Brussels lingua franca. As discussed in earlier blogs, these non-Belgian EUs have European legislation that makes it easier for them to work and live in Belgium despite their non-Belgian status. And with Brussels as the EU capital, many EU nationals are taking advantage of their European rights and establishing themselves in Brussels, working within European-wide private and public organisations, agencies, and companies.

How to become an EU citizen or Citizenship for sale

2009-04-22T01:50:00.000-07:00

EU citizenship is powerful stuff.

Which may be why it is up for sale.

Several Western and Northern EU Member States are substantially wealthier and in many ways more politically powerful than their Eastern EU neighbors. This discrepancy in national wealth and political capital may contribute to the sale of EU citizenship, via the sale of EU Member State citizenship, that is appearing in national markets like Bulgaria (approximately 14000 euros for Bulgarian citizenship, less for just a Bulgarian passport) or Malta (10000 euros).

Of course, Bulgarian citizenship does not buy a person entrance to the EU's (in)famous Schengen area. The Schengen area of the EU is the legal area within which all peoples can live, work and move about freely. However, Bulgarian citizenship does provide a person with a number of as yet not clearly defined (and thus more vaguely enforced) European rights and privileges, among which are opportunities to more easily work and establish oneself within the Schengen zone.

Plus, Malta is already a member of the Schengen area since December last year. Bulgaria is currently in the process of implementing Schengen integration with plans to be fully integrated in the next year. Romania, another nation reported to be selling national citizenship to those looking for a back way into EU citizenship, is set to join Schengen in 2011. So purchasing national citizenship with one of these countries can always be considered an investment in the future.

It’s not unusual for a country to charge cash for some sort of nationalization. A relative of my dad paid a bit of money when he applied for Irish citizenship in the 1970s. A relative of my mom explored becoming a New Zealand citizen and discovered he’d be expected to contribute quite a lot of cash to the New Zealand economy if he decided to pursue New Zealand citizenship.

The USA has historically played around with the idea of offering expedited citizenship to those willing to serve in the US armed forces. Joining the active US military isn’t exactly buying your way into US citizenship, but, for some, this process to possible citizenship may offer an objectionable cost.

Of course, in all of these cases, there is no straight sale of citizenship—citizenship tests and obligations are attached to the application process. But money can definitely be central in the acquisition of a new national citizenship.

With the arrival of the current recession, one can assume that cash will only become more important as people look to buy their way into national policies, politics, and ultimately nationalities themselves. It’s interesting to see how governments and migrants will respond to the incentives and expenses.

Personally, I still believe in a more cultural form of citizenship—I'd say that I'm definitely a citizen of the USA. But in a world where boundaries are more frequently perceived as barriers, I could be a member of a migratory minority.

PS. It's not legal to buy citizenship to an EU nation--just in case my sense of irony in this post has gone unnoticed up to now.

How to go to school in Belgium and how to have your employer pay (nothing) for it

2009-04-14T03:19:00.000-07:00

I promised this post some time ago. However, the document pertaining to this piece of employment legislation is 44 pages of French or Dutch, and I am still struggling to read Le Match. But here goes:

Here is the overview as best I can deduce:

Le congé-éducation payé is a system according to which a Belgian private employer can sponsor employees in an academic course and recuperate the cost of all or most of the employee’s tuition fees from the government.

Le congé-éducation payé is most frequently used (as far as I can tell) to enroll employees in language classes, either French or Dutch.
Amira, a language school located near Place Luxembourg, has a lot of experience with this method of payment. The administration at Amira is quite helpful in setting up the process. Plus, Amira offers the most hours of language class for the least amount of money in the evening that I've found, so it is a language school option worth further exploration. Berlitz, another language option, is pricier but offers more flexible and intensive language instruction. The Belgian Berlitz administration is also familiar with le congé-éducation payé.

Le congé-éducation payé is also used to enroll employees in Microsoft Office classes. After completing a rather expensive liberal arts education, I have learned the hard way that a class in Microsoft Excel or Powerpoint would, in some cases, have been a far more fruitful investment. Apparently, Belgian employment law agrees with me.

The process of Le congé-éducation payé works like so:

The employee(s) finds the classes.
The employer enrolls the employee(s) in the classes.
The employer pays for the classes.
The employer forwards proof of tuition payment to le Service public fédéral Emploi, Travail et Concertation. A Belgian employer is entitled to remuneration of tuition fees of up to 2100 euros brut per month.

The rules are slightly different, I think, if an employee is 45 years old or older, but I didn’t quite understand this part. Please enlighten me if you have experience.

Also, this extended education can be completed in the evening, after a full day of work OR an employee can request (and employers are actually NOT allowed to refuse without just cause) to complete the courses during the workday.

This means that an employee can potentially enroll and attend class instead of attending work. The employee will attend classes paid for by the employer while ALSO receiving his or her usual salary. The days that the employee attends class are legally viewed as workdays, not vacation days, as the education sought by the employee will (Belgian law assumes) contribute to the employee’s performance at the work place.

Le congé-éducation payé in practice, one example:
I have a friend that requested a two-week French immersion course. My friend’s company was legally required to comply with the request and pay the friend his usual salary while he attended French classes. However, my friend was then required to display proof of having completed his French classes to satisfaction. Plu, he lost some paid vacation days, as his employer was not entitled to give him both paid vacation days and paid school days.

However, the good news for my friend’s employer is that the employer will be able to recoup 2100 euros brut from the government for the cost of the language classes. This would not be the case with the employee’s paid vacation days, which are, in economic terms, lost to the employer and not recouped via le Service public fédéral Emploi, Travail et Concertation.

An employee can lose his or her rights to le congé-éducation payé if s/he abandons or interrupts the course, fails the course, fails to attend a significant part or all of the course, or is caught committing fraud (whether with regard to the course or in general, I’m not sure). Also, the employee needs a certificate of course completion in order to verify the repayment claims of the employer.

To initiate, maintain, and prolong le congé-éducation payé, an employee must clearly communicate the request to attend classes, the dates, the cost, and the expectations to the employer in advance and keep the employer up-to-date on the employee’s progress and success, providing copies of all documents related to the courses and related payments to the employer.

Read more regarding the le congé-éducation payé. I’m pretty sure that if it the employee desires to take language courses in one of the four central Belgian business languages (French, Dutch, German or English), the employer is legally required to sponsor the employee. Once again, the money will be re-paid by to the employer by the Belgian government. Most employers are quite willing to sponsor the employees in after-work language programmes; the during-work language programmes are, understandably, less popular.

Caveat: If a public Belgian agency employs an employee, le congé-éducation payé does not apply to the public employee. However, there is a different legal “droit” (“right”) that a public employee of a public Belgian agency may use to achieve similar academic goals.

Please, if after reading this, someone has a more clear view of the dos and don’ts of this system, write a comment or send me an email.

Thought Experiment:
I’m curious as to whether this situation can be used to hire and maintain a non-EU employee for less than it would technically cost to really hire a non-EU employee.

That is: could a potential employer circumvent the usual VISA laws and hire a non-EU “student” with a “student contract”?

(A student contract is a legal gray area in Belgium. A student contract is a contract in which the “student” and the employer negotiate hours worked and the job requirements. The idea is that the student gains experience and the employer gets untaxed labour. It’s a popular contract in Brussels. Just remember, “students”, with a student contract comes none of the legal protections or rights accorded to a legal Belgian employee. As a “student”, you work, more or less, at the pleasure of your employer with no legal recourse to Belgian employment law with regard to holidays, incidental costs, health care, employment termination, etc. That is, outside of what is written in the contract, the employer has no obligations towards the employee. However, many employers offer at least some incentives such as travel costs in addition to a regular stipend in a student contract. None of what an employer pays for within a student contract is taxed by the Belgian state.)

Back to the “that is” thought experiment:

If such an employer helps the “student” pay for school WHILE the student is working for the employer under a student contract, would the employer thus be reimbursed by the Belgian public system for the cost of the “student’s” school while also maintaining the “student” as a foreign employee with a “student” (i.e. cheaper, non-foreign) status? Basically, the “student” would be an employee, but not require the higher salary usually imposed upon such employers that hire non-EUs. Plus the student would get a discount on his or her tuition, as the employer, reimbursed by the Belgian government, would be paying for at least some of the student’s courses?

It’s just a thought experiment, mind you. Belgian employment law is a bit like a good chess game sometimes, requiring patience, experience, and some subtle creativity.