Hawker briefly meeting cad in European city (8)
I believe the answer is:
toulouse
'european city' is the definition.
(French city)
'hawker briefly meeting cad' is the wordplay.
'hawker' becomes 'tout' (synonyms).
'briefly' means to remove the last letter.
'meeting' says to put letters next to each other.
'cad' becomes 'louse' (both can mean a contemptible person).
'tout' with its last letter taken off is 'tou'.
'tou'+'louse'='TOULOUSE'
'in' is the link.
(Other definitions for toulouse that I've seen before include "City in southern France" , "___-Lautrec" , "Southern French city" , "Lautrec's French town" , "City in SW France" .)