Ex-Ante Impact Assessment Unit

The European Parliament's Directorate-General for Parliamentary Research Services (DG EPRS) provides comprehensive research and analytical support to the Members of the European Parliament, its parliamentary committees and the European Parliament as a whole. The EPRS philosophy is to provide independent, objective and authoritative information. More than 300 staff work in the DG's 25 units and services.  

More information about EPRS is available here:

• https://youtu.be/sMBLKXKhOhE?si=W7_bKixnb382sEq4
• https://epthinktank.eu/about/

 Why choose a traineeship at DG EPRS?   

'Empowering through knowledge' is the guiding principle of EPRS. As an EPRS trainee, you will be exposed to the core of the research and analysis process in the European Parliament. Surrounded by colleagues working on publications covering a wide range of EU policies, you will gain detailed knowledge of the EP's workings while honing your skills in your specific topic of interest. If you choose a traineeship in one of EPRS's library units, you will help the parliamentary community find the resources they need for their work.   

The Ex-Ante Impact Assessment Unit is part of the Directorate for Impact Assessment and Foresight of DG EPRS, the Parliament's research service. We support Parliament's capacity for scrutiny (control) of the executive and contribute to evidence-based policy making by providing parliamentary committees with timely and specialised support in their work on ex-ante impact assessment, covering all policy areas.   In particular, we analyse the quality of the impact assessments (IAs) accompanying European Commission legislative proposals, in the form of briefing papers called 'initial appraisals', which are supplied automatically to parliamentary committees in advance of their consideration of new legislative proposals in order to inform Members of the Parliament about the reasoning and evidence-base behind the Commission proposal. In addition to this work, at the request of individual committees, we provide a range of follow-up services including more detailed appraisals of Commission IAs, substitute or complementary IAs and IAs of parliamentary amendments.  

All the unit's publications are available on the Parliament's think tank website : http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/home.htm : (search for e.g. 'initial appraisal' and filter results by policy area 'ex-ante impact assessment').    

You will be assisting the unit with all relevant aspects of its ex-ante impact assessment work as described above, including: 

• The critical analysis of European Commission impact assessments and contributing to the corresponding initial appraisals for parliamentary committees as appropriate;
• Using and developing the unit's digital database on IA quality indicators, including data extraction, statistical analysis and reporting;
• Carrying out desk research on issues related to ex-ante impact assessment work and analysing and summarising political position papers and other documents as required;
• Monitoring developments at national and European level in relation to Better Regulation policy, analysing the content and contributing to briefing papers on the subject;
• Attending and reporting from parliamentary committee meetings or other internal or external events.

You are a candidate interested in deepening your knowledge of the EU, its policies and law-making process, who enjoys working on various topics/policy areas and has strong analytical, research and drafting skills and the ability to work well both independently and as part of a team. 

Some of your key strengths include:     

• A good general knowledge of the functioning of the EU and its institutions;
• A general knowledge of EU policies;
• Very good drafting skills in English;
• The capacity to process complex information and to synthetize it efficiently and concisely into high quality texts;
• The ability to find and critically select information;
• Good statistical analysis skills and knowledge of related tools (in particular excel);
• The capacity to complete tasks on time or under tight deadlines;
• Very good planning and organisational skills;
• Readiness and flexibility to undertake varied tasks or work on various fields and policy subjects, 
• Responsible and reliable;
• Knowledge of impact assessment procedures or EU Better Regulation policy is not essential but any relevant academic, research or work experience in these areas will be considered as an advantage.   

Previous experience in the operation and use of a statistical database would also be an asset.