ECHA Traineeship – Finance Unit

Traineeship at the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA)

The Finance Unit safeguards the financial interests of the Agency and provides customer-oriented services and advice to ensure the efficient planning and implementation of the Agency’s budget.

Tasks of the Finance unit are the following:

• Coordinates the overall planning, reporting and publication of ECHA procurement and provides legal advice and support to the other units for their procurement and contract management operations;
• Ensures quality in procurement and contract management through documenting processes with procedures, guidelines and templates by providing training, maintaining case law, drafting standard contracts, giving expert advice and support, and by exercising a verification role;
• Coordinates the budget planning, manages budget transfers, revisions and amendments, follows up budget implementation and reports on budget execution;
• Operates the financial system of the Agency by maintaining the registry of delegations and access rights, overseeing and defining the workflows, registering actions, and monitoring and reporting on operations, file documents etc.;
• Ensures the legality and regularity of the financial operations through the setting up and management of the financial control system, by providing training and advice, by verifying transactions and by keeping an exceptions register;
• Ensures, jointly with the operational unit responsible for registrations, the correct collection of the fee income from REACH;
• Manages the Agency’s monies with principles of sound financial management and secures the value of the Agency’s monetary assets;
• Performs the Agency’s accounting functions ensuring accounting quality;
• Carries out ex-post verification of company size registrants who have benefited from SME fee reductions.

Assignment

Financial Analyst trainee will work in the SME Verification Team of the Finance Unit, on activities related to verifying the companies’ eligibility for rebates on REACH registration fees.

• Assisting in the analysis of the companies’ ownership structure, annual accounts and headcount;
• Assisting in the establishment of the companies’ SME status as per the Commission Recommendation (2003/361/EC);
• Supporting in advising the registrants on the interpretation of the Commission SME Recommendation and REACH Fee Regulation;
• Assisting in the management of the verification process including establishing contacts with registrants and handling the communication from informal emails to drafting decisions and letters to the registrants;
• Liaising with the operational units on issues related to invoicing, legal questions, finance and accounting;
• Follow-up of the deadlines given to industry for the submission of supporting documents and other replies;
• Filing and document management.

Profile

• Completed university degree in finance/accounting/corporate law;
• Solid analytical skills and attention to detail;
• Ability to take responsibility for specific areas of work and see actions through to completion ensuring that the deadlines are met;
• Experience in using MS Office tools;
• Good communication and interpersonal skills;
• Aptitude for team work;
• Good English skills both written and spoken (as this is the working language of the Agency).

Starting Date: 1 March 2015

Duration: 6 months

Deadline for applications: 2 February 2015 at 24:00 EET (GMT+2)

Read more and apply here.