Process overview

Twice a year.

• For traineeships beginning in October, registration opens in February.
• For traineeships beginning in March, registration opens in July-August of the previous year.

You must submit all supporting documents at the same time as the application form.

How to apply?

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Your application is assessed on basis of academic profile, language skills and additional competences, skills and qualities, such as having an international profile, work experience, certificates and other achievements.

Quotas by nationality are applied to EU candidates to ensure a spread of nationalities, with safeguards to ensure that smaller countries are adequately represented.

Third countries are grouped together in a single quota. 

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Your supporting documents are verified by a preselection committee against the information you declared on your application.

• Applications not meeting eligibility criteria or unsupported or supported only partially by justification documents are rejected.  
• All candidates who passed the eligibility checks are included in the Virtual Blue Book.

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Once in the Virtual Blue Book, you can apply for up to 3 traineeship positions.     

Interviews may be conducted by phone at the initiative of the recruiting entity.  

There are 3 times more candidates in the Virtual Blue Book than places available.

How does the Virtual Blue Book work?

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If selected, the Traineeships Office issues the placement offer.
Your selection becomes final only when your placement offer is published in your account.

You may accept or refuse it; refusing it will exclude you automatically from the pool of candidates for that session.

Any unofficial communication between applicants and Directorates-General/Agencies/Bodies does not constitute an offer.  

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YES = Traineeship

NO = No traineeship for this session, no further offers will be sent.

Candidates can submit a new application for the next session(s).