Traineeship: Compliance and Governance

Job Description

Your team

You will be part of the Compliance and Governance Division in the Directorate General Secretariat. Our Division has around 25 members of staff across three teams who are responsible for implementing and continuously developing the ECB’s ethics and public access regimes. We provide advice to ECB staff on ethics-related issues, organise training and awareness activities and coordinate the ECB’s responses to public access requests as well as requests and queries from national authorities and the European Ombudsman.

In your role as a compliance and governance trainee, you will be part of one of our three teams. The Ethics and Integrity team promotes ethical standards of behaviour within the ECB, the Eurosystem and European banking supervision; the Governance and Risk Monitoring team monitors conduct risk and strengthens governance; and the Transparency and Access to Documents team works on accountability and transparency issues.

The ECB is an inclusive employer and we strive to reflect the diversity of the population we serve. We encourage you to apply irrespective of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or other characteristics.

Your role

As a trainee in one of our teams you will:

• contribute to outreach and knowledge management activities by developing ethics-related training and resources, such as workshops, awareness campaigns and e-learning courses;
• engage with staff and provide advice on ethics-related matters, including conflicts of interest, gifts and hospitality and post-employment restrictions;
• support transparency initiatives by assessing document disclosure requests under the public access regime and other applicable frameworks;
• conduct policy or legal research and benchmarking exercises on topical issues;
• regularly monitor and report on current developments in the fields of ethics, integrity, governance, conduct risk management and transparency at national and EU levels;
• contribute to improving internal processes through digitalisation and automation and analysing and managing data by preparing statistics and maintaining dashboards.

The traineeship offers you excellent opportunities to gain experience in matters related to ethics, integrity, conduct risk management, good governance and transparency, and the use of technology in these fields. You will also learn about the tasks and functioning of the ECB. 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 law, ideally from a university within the EU;
• a sound understanding of EU institutions, EU administrative law, and banking or financial law;
• a sound understanding of current trends and challenges in ethics, integrity, conduct risk management, governance or transparency at national, EU or international level;
• a good knowledge of the MS Office package;
• 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 demonstrable interest in ethics, good governance or accountability and transparency issues;
• experience in conducting legal analysis as part of a team;
• experience with analysing data and visualising information using Excel or other tools;
• exposure to process analysis and/or optimisation.

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.

DEADLINE: Feb 23, 2026

About the Organization

The ECB is the central bank for Europe's single currency, the euro. The ECB’s main task is to maintain the euro's purchasing power and thus price stability in the euro area. The euro area comprises the 16 European Union countries that have introduced the euro since 1999.