Hi, I just joined this forum and have been blown away by the amount of useful info on it..

Basically, I'm gonna put together some applications for EU traineeships over the coming weeks and I was hoping someone could give me some insight into how competitive it is for Irish nationals....I've heard that the EU has a disproportionately low number of staff from the U.K., and thus the number of points required to pass the pre-selection for traineeships is probably lower than for nationals from countries that attract tonnes of applications (such as Italy), but I don't know if this is the case for Irish nationals...

I have a European politics related MA from an internationally respected university, but my BA was at a relatively unknown college (I still curse the day I chose my degree on the basis of subject matter rather than institutional prestige, because it seems far more important for getting ahead..). I've fluent French and am doing an internship at a European-focused NGO..Anyway, sorry to bore you by going on about myself, I'd just love if someone could share some info (or even just speculate) on the differing competitiveness for different EU nationals..

Cheers...

I once worked with a person who used to be responsible for the preselection of British candidates and he told me that while there are around 2 times more candidates than vacancies for the U.K. candidates, it is much more competitive for nationals of the new accession countries, where the number might go over 10-20.
But it was already some time ago, so I can't really tell you if it's still valid Try to look somewhere for the points on your CV which are evaluated - if you are not preselected you can ask the traineeships office to send you your detailed marks - I think the topic was somewhere on the forum - once you know what exactly is graded you can try to identify your weakest points and work on them
Good luck and hope to see you all at the Commission for lunch one day

That's good to know Aneena, thanks.
I think Irish people are more likely to meet the language requirements than Brits, so it might be slightly more competitive for us..
I was also wondering if you could speculate on whether or not there are certain DGs where being a native English speaker is more of an advantage? I'd instinctively say it's advantageous for the Communications DG, and maybe the Publications office..any of the ones where policy expertise isn't really required...Have you any views on this?
I also noticed that Publications doesn't get a huge number of applicants (it was in the under-100 category in that document from around 2002). Do you know if it's also a very small unit that doesn't take many trainees?
Cheers