“This directive says very clearly that there should not be an abuse of traineeships through some kind of disguised work,” EU commissioner for jobs Nicolas Schmit told reporters in Brussels, as these experiences are meant to serve only as a bridge into the labour market for inexperienced young people.

“And that’s why trainees have to be paid decently, fairly, according to the rules, collective agreements, minimum wages,” he added.

To date, the EU only relied on non-binding legislation to set principles to ensure quality traineeships for young people, and the most recent recommendation is already 10 years old.

On Wednesday, the EU executive updated the 2014 council recommendation and introduced the first legislation on the topic, which includes the principle that trainees have to be paid.

However, the main focus of the directive is to ensure that traineeships are not used to disguise regular jobs, and the commission is putting the ball in the court of national labour authorities to detect such cases through inspections and controls.

The commission has listed six elements that could help labour inspectors detect whether an internship is being used as a substitute for a regular job, including the lack of a clear learning objective, an excessive duration of the internship (more than six months) or the need for prior work experience.

“One thing must be clear: a traineeship is a traineeship. We have to ensure that traineeships are not used instead of actual work contracts,” centre-right MEP Dennis Radtke commented.

For European trade unions and youth councils, the proposal is seen as a lost opportunity to improve the situation of trainees in the EU and to ensure equal opportunities for all young people.

“The European commission stopped halfway,” said María Rodríguez Alcázar, president of the European Youth Forum.

“Without binding rules on remuneration, the European Union will not end the exploitation of young people in the labour market,” she added, referring to the fact that the commission merely called on member states to ensure interns are paid.

The EYF calculated last year that a young person doing a traineeship in the EU spends an average of €1,028 per month on basic living costs such as housing, transport, health, food, leisure, and clothing.

“Unpaid traineeships mean bright young people from working class backgrounds are locked out of many careers because they can’t afford to work for free,” stressed Tea Jarc, confederal secretary at the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).

Yet there is no obligation at the EU level to provide trainees with a minimum level of conditions, including pay and access to any kind of social protection.

“The directive proposed today does little to address this scandal, giving yet another job to under-resourced labour authorities when the obligation should be on employers to deliver quality traineeships,” argued Jarc.

Meanwhile, the latest data available from the International Labour Organization (ILO) shows that between 2009 and 2021 EU countries such as Lithuania (-38 percent), Romania (-28.8 percent), Ireland (-25.4 percent) and Croatia (-22.6 percent) saw a sharp decrease in the number of inspectors.