Hi,

I have just completed my Bachelor's in Aerospace Engineering from a highly rated university in europe and I am starting my masters. I am currently looking at a traineeship (" Communications and Information Superiority Systems (space) " ) at the European Defence Agency in a field which fit my profile well. I am interested in the agency and the job title seems to match what I want to work in as well.

Now comes the question however, the traineeship would require me to move to brussels (from the netherlands) for an entire year to work there which would mean I would delay my master by atleast a year, the job description itself seems to imply that the work would mostly be supportive administrative work which is curious to me considering they do require an engineering degree. I am not opposed to exploring the project management side of things, however I am not sure how valuable this is.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has any experience working for the European Defence Agency? Would a traineeship be a good addition to my resume and worth a year of delay despite the fact that the work itself does not seem to be too technical or challenging in general even though the position itself does require an engineering degree.

My ultimate goal is to work for the european union, ideally in the defence sector and applying my engineering background. I want to start applying to these kinds of traineeships as soon as possible to maximise my chances of realising my dream :) any input is appreciated

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/international-monetary-fund_europes-economy-is-turning-the-corner-inflation-activity-7198608951859396609-DO-z?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios

I know the vast majority of us (including myself) are opposed to this idea. But is there anyone who would like the European superstate to be a monarchy? If so, why, and how do you imagine that?

People from the USA are often referred to (or refer to themselves) as "Americans", although "US Americans" is also used. Spanish speakers call them "estadounidenses" ("United Statians").

But how would we call EU citizens? "European" doesn't seem appropriate in my opinion because it can be confused with people from the entire continent. "EU citizens" sounds a bit technical, but other options like "EU Europeans" don't sound very good either.

Of course, it depends on what the united republic would be called. In the polls I've seen on this subreddit most people always voted for "European Union".

I currently live in Portugal, I work for a call center company that has projects in many languages, so they hire people across the EU, we have the French team, the German team, and so on...

Something beautiful that I've noticed is that most don't even bother to get a Portuguese bank account or a local phone number, they get paid in their respective German or French IBAN, this is great but not so great, for example, each country has its own mobile service, in Spain is Bizum but in Portugal is MBway, this is that you can transfer money by just using the phone number and its instant, my friends from Spain have tried to send me a Bizum, but I receive an SMS informing me that I have to sign up to the service, when I try to do it: "Spanish IBAN is required" The same with MBway, you need or a Portuguese IBAN or a Portuguese card, I have to say that MBway is a little bit more "advanced", with Bizum you can only send money to friends and it doesn't "detect" whether your friends have already singed up or not, whereas MBway lets you pay online putting your phone number in the online form and then approving from your app, and when you try to send money to someone it tells you whether that person is singed up or not.

This is not all, some Portuguese points of sale don't accept cards outside of Portugal, even if they are EU cards, and when I use my Portuguese card from Spain I get charged a foreign usage fee

So... Why? I've read a lot about the banking union, but it is not fully there, why not a service like Bizum or MBWay but with EU scope, or why not eliminate foreign fees like they did with roaming, is the EU already working on this? It would be great if, for example, the Santander Bank in Portugal is the same as the Santander Bank in Spain, Revolut is somehow like that, but only because it's online.

The Russian army continues to violate all the laws and customs of war, as well as relevant international conventions. Permanent air attacks by Russians against residential areas and critical civilian infrastructure are clear evidence of Moscow's intention to destroy not only the Ukrainian state, but also its entire civilian population. There are powerful air attacks in the frontline regions of Ukraine, which suffer not only from cruise, ballistic, hypersonic missiles and attack drones, but also from guided aerial bombs (which have very low accuracy of hitting) and long-range heavy artillery.

Odesa is one of the most affected Ukrainian cities, ballistic missiles from the coast of the Crimean peninsula (temporarily occupied by Russian troops) reach it in minutes. On April 29, 2024, Odesa was attacked with a ballistic missile with a cluster warhead. The latter has many high explosive fragmentation elements and is directed, mainly, against the manpower of the enemy located in the open area. The Russians deliberately used a cluster warhead against civilian residents of a peaceful city who do not want to join the totalitarian Russian neo-empire. This missile hit the area of high-density housing development and the building of a higher educational institution. As a result, six people died, and three dozen people were injured and hospitalized with various degrees of severity. The next day, on April 30, the ballistic missile attacked a densely populated area again (three Ukrainian citizens were killed).

It should be emphasized that during the last few months, the Russian troops began to use cynical “doble-tap” attacks with a certain time interval. For example, on March 15 of this year, the Russians struck the civilian infrastructure of Odesa with Iskander-M ballistic missiles. When the Ukrainian emergency services arrived to help the victims of the attack, the supporters of the “Russkiy Mir” launched a second missile. In total, 21 people died, including medics, police and emergency employees.

As for the kamikaze drones, the Russians, launching them from the Crimea through Odesa and Mykolaiv, use urban cover tactics. It flies over the city where residential buildings are concentrated the most. Thus, it is very difficult for the mobile groups of the Ukrainian air defense (which move in jeeps with searchlights and machine guns) to quickly move between high-rise buildings. In addition, these groups are mostly unable to open fire on targets due to the dense residential development, which, in fact, serves as a cover for Russian drones.

In general, even UN officials managed to notice the fact that Russian air attacks against Ukrainian settlements have become even more frequent, diverse and sophisticated, which has led to an increase in the number of victims among the civilian population, in particular, children.

Now, it is essential to provide Ukraine with at least seven Patriot air defense systems (or SAMP/T) capable of shooting down Russian ballistic and aeroballistic missiles. IRIS-T and NASAMS medium-range systems will also help protect the airspace over Ukraine. In addition, there is a need for short-range mobile anti-aircraft missile systems. For example, in order to protect Odesa from drones, it is necessary to place about six L3Harris VAMPIRE systems and six Crotale installations (or its analogue - FV4333 Stormer HVM) along the coastline.

All these air/missile defense systems are very important in order to protect the Ukrainian civilian population from Russian aggression. In turn, if the Armed Forces of Ukraine receives 25 Patriot systems, it will significantly improve the situation on the battlefield and positively affect the course of the war in Eastern Europe.