An Internship Experience at the Council of Europe

ENI 003

Written by Eni Mazniku

In my professional life thus far, I have had a few achievements. One of them, on which I want to focus in this article, is the internship at Council of Europe Office in Tirana. It all started during a Moot Court Competition organized by EURALIUS (Consolidation of Justice System, Mission of the European Union in Albania). I was selected to be one of the representatives of the Faculty of Law at the University of Tirana during the Moot Court. After a successful presentation in that activity, the Council of Europe Mission in Tirana showed interest in the finalists in the competition. After an interview and a selection process, I was appointed as an intern at the CoE Office in Tirana.

On September, 2012, I started working as a legal assistant in the CoE Office. Personally it was an amazing professional and social experience for me. The staff there was really respectful, professional and patient to help me get adapted soon with the rules and the way of working. The main goal of every CoE Office in Europe is to promote human rights and other important core values and that was what everyone in the office used to work for.

A normal working started at 9:00 and finished at 17:30. Every day we used to sit in the morning at the round table in the kitchen, drink coffee and discussed about what we were going to do during the day, shared opinions on several topics related to the Office’s issues. And later the day was full of different activities, roundtables, conferences and other similar event. The office was very often visited by politicians, decision-makers, ambassadors and delegates from CoE Headquarters. So it was an amazing opportunity to get in touch with very notable people who were good contributors in their fields. Those contacts were very important for me and have served a lot during my professional life.

The CoE Office bases its normal activity in several short-term, mid-term and long-term projects. At the time of my internship, I had the chance to get in touch and work with several projects as PACA Project against Corruption in Albania, Promoting Human Rights and Minority Protection in South East Europe and suchlike. In short time, I had a very good chance to know the Albanian/European legislation on Anti-Corruption measures, good practices related to that, Minorities who live in Albania/Europe, their socio-economic conditions and other similar legal matters.

ENI 002

Part of my usual work there was also to attend the meetings of the Central Elections Committee, plenary session of the Albanian Parliament, Media Committee, and Laws Committee. In each of them CoE held some specific seats and positions, near the international community’s representatives. Staying closer to them every day, I also had the chance to understand things from a different point a view, in order to really understand what happens with the Albanian politics.

I would describe my experience at the CoE Office in Tirana as an amazing opportunity in every aspect. I encourage every student, especially those who study social sciences, law, international relations, and politics to take advantage of those chances. CoE offers very often internship opportunities in national level through local offices and in international level in the Headquarters. I guarantee that those are experiences that change a person’s life and a person’s perception of life, due to people that you meet and things you learn in such important environments.

Mladiinfo may also serve as a very good tool to get informed about those internship opportunities. I personally visit very often this important site to get in touch with the latest education possibilities, internships, competitions, scholarships, grants. Thanks to the information that Mladiinfo shares with us I have been part of different trainings all over Europe. I also read very carefully the personal articles in the “My story” space and I honestly admit that those articles have been true inspirations to me.

2 thoughts on “An Internship Experience at the Council of Europe

Leave a Reply