A group of European Commission trainees from the Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR) visited Bosnia and Herzegovina on 13-14 July 2015. Young Europeans from Slovakia, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Belgium, and Poland came to Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to gain a deeper understanding of the history of the country, the EU’s engagement and processes of post-war reconciliation and peace building. A European Commission trainee is a recent university graduate undertaking a paid traineeship for five months in the different departments of the European Commission and of various EU agencies and bodies in order to provide them with practical experience of what it is like to work for an EU institution. At the same time, the European Commission benefits through bringing in trainees with fresh academic knowledge and new perspectives. Furthermore, Traineeship programme aim to create “goodwill ambassadors” for European ideas and values.
On the first day of their visit they were in Sarajevo and had meetings with representatives of the EU Delegation in BiH/EUSR, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights in BiH, the BIH Directorate for European Integration and EUFOR. They visited the Sarajevo City Hall (Vijecnica) which has been reconstructed with approximately 9 million EUR of EU funds. Meetings with various institutional and social partners were part of the programme, to enable the trainees to gain a comprehensive perspective of the social, political and economic situation in the country.
On the second day the trainees went to Tuzla where they had meetings with representatives of the International Commission on Missing Persons, the Podrinje Identification Project and Vive Žene NGO. The purpose of these meetings were to discuss the re-socialisation and treatment of war victims and their families. A visit to a private company that was damaged in the floods of 2014 and assisted through EU Floods Recovery Programme funds was also organised.
A trainee from Slovakia, Ms. Simona Meszarosova, shared her impressions of the visit: “This mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) kindly organised by the EU Delegation gave a thorough overview of the EU’s role in and support for the country, the overall situation and challenges of BiH on its path towards the EU as well as coping with the difficult past. The rich programme enabled us to see the issues of reconciliation, the legacy of war and BiH’s future in EU from various perspectives. We are very happy for the opportunity to visit this wonderful country, learn about it and to share our great experience back home.”
Read more about EU Traineeships here: http://europa.eu/about-eu/working-eu-institutions/traineeships/index_en.htm
