What I learned from a week in the EU policy bubble

By Joris 🔸 @ 2025-03-30T20:52 (+131)

Last week, I participated in Animal Advocacy Careers’ Impactful Policy Careers programme. Below I’m sharing some reflections on what was a really interesting week in Brussels!

Please note I spent just one week there, so take it all with a grain of (CAP-subsidized) salt. Posts like this and this one are probably much more informative (and assume less context). I mainly wrote this to reflect on my time in Brussels (and I capped it at 2 hours, so it’s not a super polished draft). I’ll focus mostly on EU careers generally, less on (EU) animal welfare-related careers.

Before I jump in, just a quick note about how I think AAC did something really cool here: they identified a relatively underexplored area where it’s relatively easy for animal advocates to find impactful roles, and then designed a programme to help these people better understand that area, meet stakeholders, and learn how to find roles. I also think the participants developed meaningful bonds, which could prove valuable over time. Thank you to the AAC team for hosting this!

On EU careers generally

• The EU has a surprisingly big influence over its citizens and the wider world for how neglected it came across to me. There’s many areas where countries have basically given a bunch (if not all) of their decision making power to the EU. And despite that, the EU policy making / politics bubble comes across as relatively neglected, with relatively little media coverage and a relatively small bureaucracy.
• There’s quite a lot of pathways into the Brussels bubble, but all have different ToCs, demand different skill sets, and prefer different backgrounds. Dissecting these is hard, and time-intensive
  • For context, I have always been interested in “a career in policy/politics” – I now realize that’s kind of ridiculously broad. I’m happy to have gained some clarity on the differences between roles in Parliament, work at the Commission, the Council, lobbying, consultancy work, and think tanks.
  • The absorbency is super high, especially at the Commission, and many people can probably find a way to flourish and be impactful in Brussels (though it might take some time)
• It’s hard to get the specific role you want, especially early in your career
• But by being very intentional and leveraging your network strategically, you can get a long way. I hate that this is how it works, but it’s so true. If you’re trying to enter the bubble, check your LinkedIn to see who in the bubble you know, and ask them for help!

On EU careers – EA specific

• Firstly, there’s a small yet supportive network of aligned EA folks that were incredibly friendly and willing to help
  • They give sometimes niche but very valuable advice, such as about this specific exam that you need to pass to be invited for many roles at the Commission:
    • The exam is quite easy to pass, but it’s difficult to get invited to take it. However, as a lot of roles at the Commission require the exact same exam, consider applying to lots of roles even if you wouldn’t take them, just to get invited to the exam. You’ll be a lot more hireable (for the roles you actually want) after.
• I arrived thinking that important topics (specifically in politics, I’m not sure to what extent this applies to other work) would be ‘covered’ by semi-aligned folk (e.g. “Green politicians are doing a good job already, there’s little marginal impact to be had there”). That in turn made me think that taking strategic angles on topics tangentially related to what we want (e.g. working on trade instead of live animal transport, working on the CAP instead of slaughterhouse conditions) or working with less progressive parties would be a more fruitful approach, as you could maybe insert animal-relevant points there instead of replacing people already doing good work.
  • But it turns out that the most important (animal) topics are covered by people who don’t seem scope sensitive and seem at least somewhat unwilling to think in terms of trade-offs. For example, I was (maybe naively!) surprised to learn that one of the leading MEPs on animal welfare didn’t know about the small body problem and didn’t seem to have thought much about whether insects could suffer. As such, I think there’d be a lot of scope for people to join ‘aligned’ politicians as parliamentary assistants (assuming they’d be a good fit) and push strategic agendas.
• In general I’m pretty excited about the impact potential of APAs (weirdly pronounced “ahpah” instead of “a-p-a”). One lobbyist said “it’s insane, the power in the hands of 24 year olds”, while someone at the Commission complained that “a 200-page report that an expert at the Commission worked on for two years is at equal footing with what an MEP [plausibly with support of their APAs] came up with in a few days”
  • One friend commented on my draft for this post: “yes, and what about becoming an MEP instead of APA, a bit harder but not impossible (→ join a political party)”
• (Commission-specific) Some of the somewhat abstract career strategizing / optimizing I was doing is less relevant if it’s so hard to get in. One approach that was advised is to “get in, then reshuffle”
  • Shuffling around seems common at the Commission. That also means that it’s not impossible for someone with a background in biology to switch to full-time work on AI after just two years at the Commission. I don’t think that’d be a very plausible path in industry or at NGOs!

Some miscellaneous notes

• This was the first time that I really felt that my career plans are subject to my AI timelines – I concluded that building career capital at the Commission for (a hyperbolic) 20 years before switching to a role with real impact wouldn’t work for me
• Being part of a structured program is great and probably much better than just trying to arrange your own visit. You get access to lots of experts, but still have the flexibility to dip out and meet people independently.
  • So consider applying to the next round of the Impactful Policy Careers accelerator. There’s also the Talos Fellowship, focused on EU AI policy (applications are now open)
• If you’re interested in joining the Commission, reach out to your country’s permanent representation in Brussels. Most of them have staff dedicated to helping nationals get into EU institutions
• If you’re trying to passively learn more about the EU bubble, subscribe to the Brussels Playbook newsletter by Politico
• And if you’re interested in EU careers, get in touch with EAs in Brussels!