Epistemic status: both authors passed the selection process, but we do not have any insight into the process beyond informed rumours. Moreover the process often changes, so we expect the advice in this post to become less valuable over time. We are hoping this post can bring some clarity in some of the most confusing aspects of the selection process for the Blue Book Traineeship.
There are many reasons why a European EA might want to join the European Commission. This article already goes through them, so we won’t repeat them here. The purpose of this post is to help you get a traineeship there through the Blue Book scheme. The authors of this article are two people who got accepted in this programme, one in the coming session who can ensure the tips we’re giving are up to date as of the previous selection, and the other in the previous session, and can thus give recommendations on how to best use your time during the traineeship. The selection process is often tweaked, and we only know of our own experience, we cannot guarantee how accurate this information will be for session M27 and further.
The deadline to apply for the M27 session is in a week, on September 4th, at 10:00 am CET. We thus recommend that you start gathering the required documents as soon as possible.
We apologise for the high number of acronyms, but this would not be a post about the European Commission otherwise.
The European Commission is one of the main European Institutions. The Parliament also has its own traineeship programme, the Schuman Traineeship Programme; all we know about that one is that the deadline for the next application is October 31. The Commission’s Blue Book Traineeship programme recruits trainees for all of its 41 Directorate-Generals (DG, the equivalent of a ministry) as well as the six executive agencies. Each DG is composed of different units, and every unit gets to recruit between 0 and 2 trainees per Blue Book session. There are two sessions a year: March sessions (from March to July, for which the deadline to register is in September of the previous year), and October sessions (October to February, with a deadline to register in April). The last session had 941 positions, for about 10,000 applicants.
Anyone over 18, with a university degree and knowledge of two official European languages can apply, as long as they do not have previous experience working in the European Institutions (more precisely, under 42 days). However, there are nationality quotas: Italian candidates are often widely over-represented and all non-EU citizens share the same quota of 40-something trainees, and do not have access to all DGs. Applications for the next sessions are currently open, until September 4 2026. If you are a European citizen in a position to need a traineeship then, or if you do not have a stable position and are able to move to Brussels for a few months, we strongly suggest you take the time to apply: this experience will teach you much, look great on your CV, open great networking opportunities and maybe opportunities for impact (although this should not be your priority at this stage).
As mentioned in the previous article, working in the Commission could open doors to working in many impactful cause areas (see the FAQ for the list of DGs that are closed to non-EU nationals):
Under President Van der Leyen, there has been a push toward the use of AI and many DGs have AI projects. The most relevant are CNECT (notably the AI Office, although so far they have not had trainees), the Joint Research Centre and DIGIT whose recent projects have included the main AI tools used in the Commission, DG Translation who fine-tuned a Mistral model to get a new model that is apparently the best one for rare European languages, and RTD, which published the European Strategy for AI in Science.
HERA handles medical countermeasures and threat anticipation. SANTE manages cross-border health threats. ECHO cooredinates rescEU, the EU reserve of stockpiles and response capacities; it also runs the Emergency Response Coordination Centre.
INTPA is the DG for development cooperation. HERA is relevant here too.
Animal welfare is handled by unit G5 of SANTE, there is also ENV for wildlife, habitats and protected species. Then there is AGRI and MARE; the focus here is more the production of meat and fish, so they are valuable to better understand the larger environment, but depending on the work, immediate impact is likely to go the wrong way: this is valuable experience, but think about whether this is work you would be fine doing for 5 months.
CLIMA and ENER are self-explanatory. TAXUD can also be a good place to learn about carbon adjustment mechanisms.
The Secretariat General is a great place to get a broader view of what is happening in the Commission, since you would be collaborating with many DGs. Similarly, you might want to consider BUDG and ECFIN, which handle budget, spending review and economic analysis.
Start by creating an account here. You then need to select one of the three types of traineeships: ADMIN UG - university graduates or ADMIN VET - vocational education and training graduates) or translation (TRA). TRA is for translation work at DG Translation (there are also ADMIN positions there, for instance to work on their AI tools). ADMIN is for everything else. ADMIN VET is a new programme focused on applicants without higher education. For the rest of this guide, we will focus on ADMIN UG, which is what we know, and where most of the positions seem to be. The first phase of the application is however very similar for all three streams.
Make sure you read and follow all instructions well.
As mentioned in the instructions, any degree, professional experience, international experience and language proficiency must be backed by evidence. Documents can be in any language of the European Union, other languages require official translation. If you speak another EU language additional to your mother tongue without owning any certificate that proves your level of proficiency, you might want to consider taking a certifying exam prior to applying. Otherwise, you cannot mention it with a higher qualification than A2. Any additional EU language to the two required to apply will bring more points to your application.
We advise you to start with the application process early, in case you might struggle to find some required documents (e.g. university transcript of records).The instructions insist on the importance of start and end dates: if they don’t match the documents provided, the application will be discarded.
For overlapping experiences, you can declare up to two experiences over a given period of time, with at least one of them being part-time. This includes education and professional experience, so if you had two part time jobs while being a student, you should declare the most relevant one only. In any case, you can only declare experiences that correspond to at least 15 full days of work. In the case of internships; we declared ours as full-time during a full-time education and had no issue. In any case, you should declare the dates as they appear on your contracts and degrees: changing them so they fit the requirement better will get you rejected. Always declare the dates as they appear on the documents (first of the month if you do not know the exact date). You can also add complementary information for each experience in case you are unsure.
Since all supporting documents must be merged into one single pdf file with a table of contents, one easy way to proceed is to use a tool like ilovepdf.com (online) or pdf24 (offline). Dump all your supporting documents in it, using the “merge” and “page number” functions (rearrange the documents in the right order before finalising). This will get you a single pdf file with page numbers. You can now create a table of contents with a software like Microsoft Word, mentioning the relevant page numbers, then merge that table of contents with the original file (using your pdf tool again) to obtain your final version.
The process is extremely tedious, but straightforward. It requires no CV, essays, work tests or recommendations. But the more experience you have, the more difficult it is to complete the form with no mistakes, so consider having someone check your application before sending it: is every experience justified? Do the dates match? This will be the process for every session, so make sure to keep a copy of your information in case you need to apply again: sadly the Commission does not keep your profile from one session to the next; so if you need to apply again, you’d better have all your information in one place.
We were not able to acquire clear information on the selection criteria. Officially, what matters is your academic background, your languages and experience, but there is no publicly available information on how these criteria are weighted. It seems that the number of languages known at at least B1 is a great advantage, and so is an advanced education. For professional experience, it is not clear whether the value mostly comes from a diversity of experience or the amount. What is certain is that the process is independent of the position you will get, as so long as you pass the first stage, you will get access to the same list of offers.
Regarding the national guiding rates (quotas), we have heard contradicting perspectives. Some say they are applied at the first stage, other say that they may be applied after the units have selected their candidate. We recommend to simply apply, especially if you are a European Citizen, or if you are a non-European citizen with a high level of education, knowing many languages, and interested in European affairs. Unfortunately we cannot guarantee that passing this stage means that you have also passed the national guiding rates.
Have you received an email confirming pre-selection and upcoming access to the Virtual Blue Book? Congratulations! You now have one month to draft a generic motivation letter, and to reflect on which DGs interest you the most. One month was the time gap between pre-selection notification and the first of the three application rounds for the October 2026 cohort.
It is a good idea to draft your generic motivation letter before access to the Virtual Blue Book opens, so you already have that out of the way. It should not require as much time and effort as specific motivation letters (the ones you will draft when applying to specific roles in the Virtual Blue Book). Here is an example of structure that worked for us (assuming the hiring committees actually read it):
§ 1 - short profile description and reason(s) for applying
§ 2 - relevant experience and/or skills
§ 3 - what I hope to gain from the traineeship
§ 4 - 1-sentence conclusion.
In parallel, we recommend you already start ranking the DGs you find most interesting and relevant for you. The post we recommend at the beginning of this post has a whole section on how to do that. Note that, while it states you should “ideally start doing this soon after [your] initial application, well ahead of the release of the preselection results, as you only have one week to send your three applications once the portal is open”, this is now arguably less true since there is one month between pre-selection and the first targeted application round, and one week between each targeted application. This guide is written with the goal of restricting the work to what really increases your chances. Of course, timing could change again for any new Blue Book cohort, so always check the most recent information.
Note that heads of units in Executive Agencies cannot invite you for the CAST test (see below). If your goal is to use the traineeship to find a permanent position in the Commission, this is an important factor to keep in mind. Another useful thing to consider is the fact that 92% of positions are in Brussels, meaning networking becomes much easier if you avoid the other locations.
The list of all traineeship roles becomes accessible a week before the first round of applications. At this stage, you cannot apply. You can however start checking out the traineeships offered by the DGs you ranked in the last step (and maybe even other DGs too). A good idea here is to send a short expression of interest (EoI) to the chiefs of all the units that interest you. Their contact details are usually easy to find using a search engine, or directly on https://op.europa.eu/en/web/who-is-who/. If they reply positively to your EoI, you might want to formally apply to their traineeship, as you have a higher likelihood of being selected.
Here is an example of EoI structure that we used:
§ 1 - I am writing to express interest in the Blue Book traineeship in unit XXX. (1 line)
§ 2 - Relevant experience and/or skills (90 - 140 words)
§ 3 - What I find interesting in this traineeship (~ 45 words)
§ 4 - Would you consider my profile if I applied? Can send CV; available for a call (50 words)
Bonus tip:
The list of all traineeship roles is long (more than 900 entries for the October 2026 cohort). In order to help you comb through it and find the ones potentially most relevant to you, you could scrape the whole platform and have an LLM write a code that compiles all the scraped data into an Excel sheet. You can then send the Excel sheet to your LLM and give it a prompt like “my factors for choosing a traineeship are X, Y and Z. Give me your top 10 offers with the best combination of these factors”.
Scraping: we didn’t find a way to automate this step. If you manage to do it, feel free to write to us, or let us know in the comments.
Go to page 1 of the Virtual Blue Book, save the page using ctrl+S or cmd+S (.html or .htm format), go to page 2, save the page, etc, until you’ve saved all .html files in one folder. This should not take too long (a few minutes).
Vibecoding: give one of the .htm(l) files to your LLM as an example, and tell it to write a code that can extract all the info you want (title, DG, unit, area(s), place of work, URL…) from a folder where all the .html files are located and compile it into an Excel file. If necessary, also tell your LLM to give you a beginner-friendly short guide on how to run the code. This step is also quite short. One of us had 0 experience with coding and managed to do this fairly easily.
Run the code - you now have a compilation of all Blue Book offers.
In the first phase, you get to apply to one position every week, so you need to make it count. Besides your general interest for the DG, unit and job description, several decision factors may include:
The number of applications already sent to the unit should carry a lot of weight in your decision. Less competition is better. We recommend writing your cover letters for each of your top three positions early on, and send them on the last day a few hours before the deadline, so you have time to change your choice if you notice your dream-traineeship is oversubscribed. Doing an interesting traineeship is obviously better, but there are many reasons you might want to do a Blue Book Traineeship, so consider applying to positions that may not be the most stimulating considering your experience, but with which you have exceptional chances of getting accepted. The job description may not fully match what you will do anyway, and you will have the chance to ask to work on other tasks of the unit that match your interests closer.
Note that the application period ends at 10:00 AM CET, not PM! If you miss the deadline, you do not take part in this round, but you still have the next ones.
One thing you could do here is apply the scraping and vibecoding tip we gave above, but tell your LLM to add a “number of received applications” column to the Excel file so you can display the roles starting with the ones that raised the least interest. Do it as late as you can (for example, the night before the application deadline).
Doing this proves more and more useful as you move from the first to the second and third rounds. This strategy allowed one of us to play it safe and focus their efforts on a relatively interesting position that had received very few other applications (1 or 2) in the last round. It might have been an even better strategy to do it already in the second, or even the first round, because the pool of positions with 0 to 2 applications is much bigger at those points, which might have led to an even more interesting position with low or 0 competition. You can already ignore the positions that mention a specific person, such as “personal assistant to President von der Leyen”, they are a way to waste your weekly application.
Once your application is sent, start preparing for an interview, as you might very quickly receive a short-notice invitation, or even a call without prior notice. Be ready to introduce yourself, explain why you think you’d be a good fit, and ask a question about the job. You could also feed the job description and your application letter to your LLM and ask it to anticipate some questions, or even simulate an interview and give you feedback. In theory, you should have the interview on the week you applied. In practice, units are usually late, so when you receive a call, it may not be obvious which position this is for, especially if you applied to similar roles. So do not forget to save a copy of the offer to prepare for the interview (the platform is not accessible outside of the application times). In fact, save a copy of all the offers that seem interesting, as this will help you decide on your second and third choice.
Your cover letter should explain why you are the ideal candidate for this traineeship. The ideal candidate is one that has all the required skills, and a clear interest in developing the other skills mentioned. This is a traineeship, it is normal not to know everything at first. Also show that you have looked into the work of the DG and the unit. One useful tip here: find out who in our community is doing a traineeship at the moment, so they can connect you with a trainee currently working in the unit you want.
Simply repeat the previous steps. Some of the units will have already selected their candidate, so make sure that your top choices are still available, and not oversubscribed. Also use your time to expand your search, to find interesting positions that did not fit your top criteria. On week 2, you should have a top 5 of the offers you will want to apply to, as some of them will have too many applications already to be worth it. More information on where people are applying can be found on the dedicated Reddit. Try to get insider’s information by asking current trainees, as some positions are already filled by week 2, but are still marked as available. Conversely, since the page only mentions the total number of applicants rather than those for the week, you might learn that the unit was unsatisfied with all their applicants, so your specialised profile would have a good chance of getting you hired, if no one else has applied this week. Getting in touch with the current trainee is also a good chance to learn more about your potential supervisor and the working conditions.
At round 3, you should play it safe: go for the position you are the most qualified for with the fewest candidates, to maximise your chances of getting hired, regardless of the work. At the end of the round, you should also make a copy of every remaining position with 0 to 2 applications: open them all in different tabs (saving them on your computer with ctrl+D/cmd+D might be safer in case your computer is turned off, but it might take a lot of time). There is a way to do this fast: when telling your LLM to create a script to extract info from the .htm(l) files, make sure you tell it to include a column with the URL of each job. Then, feed the Excel file to your LLM and have it create another script that will open all URLs in a new browser window (again, make it write a beginner-friendly short guide on how to run the code if necessary - it’s easy). This will help you get prepared for phase 2.
After the end of the first phase, you will received an email from the traineeship office telling you you have failed to be selected by all the units you apply to. This is a lie: all they know is that no unit has selected you yet, and they are assuming that they are all on time. In reality, you can still get a reply to your first application at this stage. But even if you had all your interviews and you know they selected someone else, don’t worry - it is still far from over. Every units always needs more people to do their work, and the choice has reduced to whoever is left and having no one. Our data show that there are not many more applicants who reach the virtual Blue Book than there are positions in it, so you still have a good chance of being selected. While it is no longer possible to formally apply, here are two things you can do:
Following the evolution of the applications is very useful to determine which DG is getting new applicants in a given week. It also gave us data regarding three different sessions which can help determine the best strategy to optimise your chances of getting recruited.
First, the number of positions is rather stable across sessions: 930 in March 2025, 892 in March 2026, and 931 in October 2026. 92% of offers are for Brussels (which makes it the best place to network, unless you're specifically interested in a unit in Luxemburg), 2% to 3% are in Luxemburg (ESTAT, SANTE, CNECT, OP, BUDG, GROW, EMPL, PMO) and about the same in Warsaw (all in Frontex). The other cities available are Copenhagen (essentially the European Environment Agency), Vigo (European Fisheries Control Agency), Grange, Ispra (famed for the Joint Research Centre, but somehow the one traineeship there was with HR), Seville, and traineeships in the Commission representation in the different member states (Paris, Prague, Riga, Sofia, Tallinn, Vienna, Budapest, Bratislava, Helsinki, Ljubljana, Vilnius, Zagreb…). Unless you need to stay in your country, you really should focus on the positions in Brussels, as this is where you will get the most of the advantages of a BBT.
Most DG are quite constant in the number of traineeships they offer, although the specific units that are recruiting can change from one session to the next. The DG that recruit the most trainees are: INTPA (48 to 52 posts), COMP (40 to 43), GROW (36 to 41), COMM (32 to 34), and EEAS (29 to 30). Among the most relevant DG for EA, we have: CNECT (20 to 26 posts), SANTE (23 to 25), CLIMA (21), ECFIN (18 to 20), BUDG (18), RTD (20), ENER (15 to 19), ECHO (25 to 26), ENV (11 to 18) and DIGIT (8 to 10). HERA had 1 post in every session. DGT had none, probably because they only recruit from the translator streams (some trainees there had interesting AI projects though, so if this change, this could be an interesting DG). JRC is also interesting and had 9 to 10 positions, but not in Brussels.
At the end of round 1, the median post has 1 to 2 applications (top is for working at the president’s cabinet, which gets to almost 50 applications every time: don’t apply there, this is a waste of time), and 56 to 76 percent of posts have two or fewer. By the end of round 3, the median reaches 3 to 4, but 29% to 50% of remaining posts still have two or fewer applications (that’s 11% to 21% of total positions). This makes it difficult to decide in which order to apply. The choices of weeks 1, 2 and 3 are not exactly ranked, but once you get an offer, you have to take it or give up on this session. But you cannot know how fast units are going to respond to your application. The most relevant data point here is that you cannot apply in round 2 to a position that chose its trainee in round 1. The DGs that have lost the most positions by round 3 are TRADE, ENEST, ENER and COMP, so if on round 1, you see a position in one of these DGs that really interests you, you might want to apply early. Convertly, DGs that receive few applications such as TAXUD, BUDG, HR, PMO or ESTAT are likely to also still be available by week 3, so you could keep them for then. In any case, regardless of the data, favour the positions where you can convince the recruiters that you can be a useful addition to their team: if you are the only one to apply to the position no one cares about, you are guaranteed an interview, but why would they hire someone who has no interest in their work? And if you do get the position, you will get to learn a lot about the European Commission, but you will still have to work for 5 months on something you do not care about. So these data are here to help you choose between several choices that genuinely interest you. In the same spirit, although we strongly recommend applying to positions where you would be the only candidate, on the last week, when few such positions remain, it is preferable to be one of 4 candidate to work on a topic where you are relevant than being the one candidate for a position you have no interest in.
The positions with 0 applicants at the end are important to know for phase 2 though: these are the positions for which you should send an expression of interest to the head of unit (as long as this is a role you can see yourself doing).
Congratulations! Don’t forget to confirm the position, and start joining all the information channels (hopefully this time they will use Signal rather than WhatsApp…). Start preparing for your life in Brussels (we hope you got a position in Brussels, although Luxemburg can have interesting opportunities for specific profiles). Don’t forget to reach out to the local EA Community! Your goal is now to learn as much as you can about the Commission, the other European Institutions, and the other stakeholders in the Brussels ecosystem.
It is an almost mandatory step for working in the Commission in a permanent manner: ask about anyone there, whatever their grade, they will share the fun memories of their traineeship last year / five years ago / twenty years ago. Of course, this is survivor’s bias.
But it is useful to understand why this happens, so you fully understand your opportunities and how to best leverage them:
I am not a European citizen, can I still apply?
Citizens of candidate countries are treated like EU citizens in this regard (make sure that you meet the languages requirements if your native language is not an official EU language), although they cannot apply to all DGs (see the list). Citizens of countries that are neither in the EU nor candidates can apply to the programmes, but are subject to the national guiding rates. Like candidates from candidate countries, they are limited to the following DGs: BUDG, CINEA, CLIMA, DIGIT, EAC, EACEA, ECFIN, ECHO, EDPS, ENV, ERCEA, ESTAT, FISMA, GROW, INTPA, MENA, MOVE, REA, SCIC, SRB and TAXUD
Do I have to upload every page of my documents, or just the pages with dates on them?
The documents only need to prove what you are claiming, so include enough pages to include your names, the dates you stated, and the seals and signatures proving this is a real document. Do not forget to include the table of content at the beginning, and check that the page numbers are correct.
There was no motivation letter in the form. Is that normal?
Access to the virtual Blue Book is only decided by your age, nationality, and your score based on your education, professional experience and languages. Letters of motivation come later, and you will have time to write them once you have confirmed you have access to the virtual Blue Book.
My volunteering was informal and nobody counted the hours. Can I still declare it?
You can declare any experience that lasted at least 15 calendar days that you can prove. If someone can write a letter confirming your work and the dates, you can include this. Otherwise, do not mention it.
What counts as an overlapping experience, and do I have to drop something?
Any experience you are declaring counts, although it is not clear whether experiences declared in different categories can overlap freely. We recommend to assume that categories are counted together and to err on the side of fewer declarations.
I worked abroad for two years. Does that count as international experience?
This rule has changed recently, so it is difficult to be certain on this. It appears that international experience now exclusively means studies, including school exchanges and mobility programmes. Professional experience abroad should count among your professional experiences.
I have no language certificate, only university courses or a bilingual school diploma.
A recent change: even A1 and A2 levels must be proven. Proof can be a certificate from a recognised language institute, a completed university course taught in the language with the corresponding diploma, or an on-going university course justified by a transcript. Certificates given by your teacher stating you have completed a language course at any level does not count for anything if it is not part of a broader university programme abroad, taught in the language. Similarly, having lived in a country speaking this language does not prove your language skills. You do not need to prove your native language however. But it only counts for eligibility purposes: if you were raised bilingual in two European languages, you do not get any points for these if you declare them as such, so it is better to justify one of them with a corresponding certification.You’ll find more info in the official FAQ, including what level you can claim with what experience.
How hard is it financially to do a BBT?
We only know the conditions in Brussels, but we haven’t heard of many difficulties from the people in Luxembourg. The living allowance there is of about €1500. Most rooms are between €750 and €1000; finding other trainees with whom to share a house could reduce your costs. Transportation is €56 per month, and the cost of living is not that high. You also get a travel allowance (paid at the end of the traineeship) that is calculated based on your usual place of residence, so the allowance can actually cover more than the cost of the ticket if you plan correctly. If you do not have a load of regular spending, you should be fine.
I have done a traineeship at an EU agency in the past. Am I still eligible?
There are other ways to do a traineeship in the Commission (the so-called “atypical trainees”). For the BBT, the rule is that you cannot apply if you have worked more than 42 days in the European Institutions, be it agencies, delegations, MEP cabinets… If you are unsure, you could try to contact the Traineeship Office (they are usually slow to answer though, especially in the application phase and the beginning of the traineeship).
How should I research DGs and units before the portal opens?
Since the job description does not always match the actual work, it can be better to choose by DG. You could start with the mission letters for the DG that seem to be associated with the questions you care about. These will tell you whether that question is among the attributions of the DG. You can then look among the different units of these DGs which ones work most closely on the topic you care about (remember that not all units will get a trainee though). Then, you can get a better idea of the work of the different units from its publications in the Who’s Who. In the end, just looking at the different offers will give you some context on the work of each unit, so having some ideas of which DGs could be interesting is good enough.
Can I see how many people applied?
Once you have access to the Virtual Blue Book, you can see how many people apply, and you should wait until the end of the application time (once again, applications close at 10:00 am Europe time, not at the end of the day. Do not miss your chance to apply in a round!). For a unit, getting a trainee is a chance to get much more work done, so if you are the only applicant and you can do the work, you have a good chance of being accepted. Also, do not hesitate to contact current trainees in that unit to learn more about the recruiting process and what it is like working there.
How is the EA Community in Brussels?
They’re lovely! Several people there work at the Commission. The Brussels AGI Collective regularly organises great talks where you can meet all kinds of people working on AI safety, be it as technical researchers, think tanks or lobbyists. The School for Moral Ambition also has its own events there. And the Touch Grass series is a good occasion to meet people while discovering the nature around. Reach out to the local community early on to get added to the WhatsApp and/or Signal group.
