Lucrative EU jobs beckon graduates

IRISH graduates are being encouraged to apply for jobs in the European Union institutions, with starting salaries of €4,000 a month.

For the first time, fluency in Irish will be useful to candidates for the more than 300 jobs available each year.

About 50,000 people from the 27 member states are expected to apply when the selection process is launched next Tuesday.

This is the first time in five years that members of the old member states can apply, as since 2004, most positions were open only to new members in an effort to bring up their numbers.

The number of Irish people working in the mostly Brussels-based institutions is down to about 290 as many joined when Ireland became a member in 1973.

Most of those are in senior positions – including the top job of secretary general held by Dubliner Catherine Day, and head of trade, David O’Sullivan.

There are very few young people coming up through the ranks, Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin, pointed out at a seminar to outline the opportunities now opening up.

Over the next three years, there will be more than 1,000 openings for administrators, linguists and support staff. A graduate’s starting monthly gross salary is around €4,200 a month and the basic for a senior official is €12,361 a month.

This year the EU is recruiting 330 graduates as administrators who must have knowledge of at least two official EU languages, one of which must be English, French or German.

Since Irish is now an official language, those who are fluent – and can prove it – can choose to do the tests in English. Irish people are traditionally poor linguists and this has handicapped many in the past.

The selection process has also been simplified with a computer-based pre-selection test in each EU country and a second assessment stage in Brussels.

* For further information, go to http://europa.eu/epso/index_en.htm