Traineeship scheme of the European Commission

The official traineeship scheme of the European Commission is a traineeship programme providing official in-service training with the European Commission. Aimed at young university graduates, it has been running since 1960 and is the biggest traineeship programme in the world. Traineeships, which start in October or March and last five months, are carried out in a Directorate-General or a service of the Commission, in a Commissioner's Cabinet, or in some of European Union's executive bodies and agencies. The programme is managed by a dedicated Traineeships Office within DG EAC, with an annual budget of €7 million, that runs a selection procedure to recruit approximately 600 trainees (also called Blue book stagiaries) for each traineeship period.

Administrative traineeships (i.e. all traineeships except those with Directorate-General for Translation) consist of the following steps:

Applicants who advance into the Selection phase are listed in a database called the (Virtual) Blue Book from which European Commission officers entitled to having a trainee are free to choose their candidates. On contacting them, the details of the traineeship are agreed upon. Approximately 2 500 candidates get into the Blue Book for every traineeship period, of whom around 600 are recruited as trainees.

As an exception, Directorate-General for Translation applies its own eligibility criteria to what are called translation traineeships, and there is no preselection. The rest of the procedure, however, is the same as for administrative traineeship.

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