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The European Commission offers two five-month periods of in-service training (stages) for young university graduates from the member states of the European Union and to a number of nationals from non-member countries. These training periods involve work experience in one of the Commission’s departments and run from 1 March and 1 October each year.
It is difficult to give an exact description of the type of work given to trainees (stagiaires) but it would normally be equivalent to that given to junior executive-grade officials e.g. compiling information and documentation, organising working groups, forums, public hearings and meetings, preparing reports and replying to queries, participation in team meetings, filing, linguistic revision of texts, etc.
Trainees will be awarded a monthly grant. The amount of the grant is decided by the Traineeships Office on a yearly basis and is dependent on budgetary constraints.
The Commission receives an average of 15,000 applications annually for the 2 traineeship periods. From these, approximately 5,000 (+2,500 for each period) are pre-selected and the final number of candidates who are offered placements is 1,200 (600 for each period).
About 30 Irish people take up traineeships at the European Commission every year.
For further information on traineeships at the European Commission, please consult the Traineeships Office website.
Click here to get an idea of what a typical day in the life of an Irish stagiaire is like.
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.jpg "Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn's website")
