The Commission’s opaquely transparent recruiting procedures

With youth unemployment levels hitting all time records across the EU, finding a job can be can be quite an arduous task. Rising numbers of the so-called NEET – an acronym for those currently not in education, employment or training – is a stark reminder that fruitless job-hunting can ultimately discourage people. Even educated, multilingual youngsters struggle to find a position after their studies and have to resort to a seemingly endless number of internships, often unpaid or barely enough to be independent.

That is why the European Commission official traineeship program attracts so many applications from all over the EU and Third Countries (EU-lingo meaning ‘rest of the world’). It is an enriching experience in terms of both professional and personal development, it looks good on your CV, “stagiaire” life is fun and – lo and behold – interns earn a startling sum of circa 1100 euros per month. No wonder applicants range in the thousands every semester. But how does the selection process work exactly?

Once the paperwork has been prepared, applications go through a pre-selection process. In the Commission’s very own words, “the preselection is carried out by Committees composed of Commission officials […] Each committee examines the applications of one specific country and is mainly composed of nationals from that country. This ensures that the members have the required language skills and knowledge of the educational system. Applications from Third Countries are evaluated by a Committee composed of officials of different nationalities and languages”. Everything seems to be very transparent and orderly so far.

Lobbying your way in

Some 2500 candidates who make it through this initial screening process then end up in a database, called the Blue Book, from which the final 600 applicants are recruited. This is where things get a little obscure.  The Commission’s website is silent on the details of this final stage. Those who have truly outstanding profiles will probably get recruited anyways. For everyone else, once you make it to the Blue Book – it’s lobbying time: again, the Commission clearly discourages the practice leaving many in the personal conviction that they have to “sit and wait”. Other more experienced (or more informed) candidates are expected to send emails and call Commission officials to convince them that their applications stand out from the rest. Of course, it helps to know someone who already works in the Commission/is somehow related to you/is a friend of a friend of a friend and so on, making it much harder for (possibly stronger) applicants who have no connections whatsoever to land the job.

The procedure turns out to be eerily reminiscent of malpractices happening ‘back home’ and which one would hope not to find at a European level. The Commission should just select the 600 trainees it needs through the Committees (and maybe have another 600 ranked in a reserve list to replace possible forfeits). All the talk about “non discrimination” and “equal opportunities” in the workplace would just amount to vacuous rhetoric if the institutions themselves don’t start setting the example.