Porto: The Commission proposed the traineeships directive in March 2024 and it has still not cleared the legislature. Two summers of interns have passed through European offices since. Trade unions spent July pressing the Irish presidency to close the file within its six months, which is the clearest signal yet that the file could otherwise drift into next year.

The delay is not simple obstruction. The proposal turned out to be narrower than its billing, and that narrowness created its own fight. Headlines described a ban on unpaid internships. The text contains no such ban. It applies to open-market traineeships only, excluding placements attached to education and training and those arranged through activation measures. Together those exclusions cover roughly four fifths of traineeships across the Union.

The European Youth Forum called the proposal two steps forward and one step back for exactly this reason. Campaigners who spent years arguing that unpaid work entrenches privilege found themselves handed an instrument that leaves most unpaid placements untouched. Some now argue for reopening the scope. Others warn that reopening anything at this stage kills the directive outright.

What the text does contain is still meaningful. It caps traineeships at six months in principle, allowing longer only where a member state justifies the extension on objective grounds. It requires that traineeships not disguise regular employment, and it obliges national authorities to enforce that distinction. It also demands penalties for employers who breach the rules, though it sets no minimum level, leaving the deterrent to national discretion.

That last gap explains much of the Council’s caution. A member state with a strong labour inspectorate reads the penalty clause as a formality. A member state whose enforcement capacity is thin reads it as an unfunded obligation. Governments in the second group have little appetite for a directive whose main cost lands on their inspectorates while the political credit goes to Brussels.

Employers add a different objection. Companies that run structured graduate programmes argue they already exceed the standard and resent a compliance layer built for firms that abuse the format. Small businesses in southern Europe, where unpaid placements are most common, warn that formalising traineeships will simply reduce their number.

Evidence on that last claim is thin in both directions. Where member states have tightened rules, placement volumes dipped and then recovered, though the composition shifted toward larger employers. Whether that counts as a loss depends on whether one values the existence of a placement or the quality of it.

The practical question now is arithmetic. A directive agreed this autumn gives member states a transposition window that ends around 2029. A directive that slips past the Irish presidency lands in a Council agenda already crowded with budget negotiations, and files that miss their window rarely find a better one. Interns starting in September will finish their careers before the rules reach them.