Traineeship in the Euro Area External Sector and Euro Adoption Division

This traineeship is in the Euro Area External Sector and Euro Adoption Division within the Directorate General Economics.

Your team

You will be part of the Euro Area External Sector and Euro Adoption Division in the Directorate General Economics. The Directorate General monitors and analyses the economies of individual euro area countries, non-euro area EU countries and the euro area as a whole.

Our Division has about 20 members of staff and is responsible for analysing and conducting studies on international trade, the balance of payments and the international investment position, as well as the price and non-price competitiveness of the euro area and EU countries. In addition, we monitor and forecast macroeconomic developments in euro area countries in central and eastern Europe and non-euro area EU countries, while also developing tools for these purposes.

Our output is an integral part of the Directorate General’s policy advice to the ECB’s decision-making bodies for monetary policy meetings. It includes articles and studies in publications such as the ECB’s Economic Bulletin, Annual Report, Occasional Paper Series and Working Paper Series.

In your role as a trainee, you will focus on one or more of the Division’s three main areas of competence: (1) trade and the competitiveness of the euro area; (2) the current account and financial account of the euro area; (3) the forecasting and surveillance of euro area countries in central and eastern Europe and non-euro area EU countries.

Your role

As a trainee, you will:

• contribute to maintaining and enhancing analytical, econometric and forecasting tools in the fields of trade, balance of payments and country analysis;
• process, consolidate and transform datasets while maintaining and enhancing database infrastructures in order to monitor economic developments;
• support the team in collecting, processing and visualising data;
• conduct quantitative analyses for the economic and policy assessment of individual countries and the euro area as a whole;
• contribute to the Economic Bulletin and other regular internal and external publications produced by the Directorate General in collaboration with other ECB business areas.

The traineeship offers you excellent opportunities to work closely with the Division’s economists and contribute significantly to our work on both longer-term projects and short-term tasks, giving you valuable experience for your future career. You will also be assigned a mentor to support your professional development, enabling you to maximise your potential. You will be part of a multicultural team that strives for continuous innovation to make a positive impact on the lives of European citizens.

Qualifications, experience and skills

Essential:

• a bachelor’s degree or higher in economics or a related field;
• a working knowledge of applied econometrics, especially time series econometrics, panel data econometrics and/or microeconometrics;
• practical experience in handling and manipulating one or more of the following types of economic data: macroeconomic data, firm-level and/or other microeconomic data, and financial market data;
• a good knowledge of the MS Office package, in particular PowerPoint and Excel;
• practical experience in working with statistical/quantitative software and programming languages such as Stata, MATLAB, Dynare, EViews, R and/or Python;
• a good understanding of the economic issues covered by the Division and of the institutional framework of the ECB and the Eurosystem;
• an advanced (C1) command of English and an intermediate (B1) command of at least one other official language of the EU, according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

Desired:

• a master’s degree or higher (completed or nearing completion) in economics or a related field;
• experience in macroeconomic modelling, with a focus on one or more of the following: DSGE models, factor models, state-space models and machine learning;
• experience in designing and programming automated reports and/or creating web-based dashboards using R (especially Shiny), delivering outputs in HTML or similar formats.

You are curious and eager to learn, and want to further develop your ability to analyse complex information. You are keen to collaborate with others, pursue team goals and learn from other people’s diverse perspectives. You strive to know and anticipate stakeholder needs, and will signal any need for change and propose alternative solutions.

You are motivated to contribute to the ECB’s mission, to serve the citizens of the EU as a member of a public institution and to work with colleagues from all over Europe. You are keen to be part of our team and to use your skills and competencies to achieve the aims of this position.

Further information

Initial traineeship of six months, with a possible extension to up to 12 months in total. The start date will be from summer 2026 onwards.