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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Policy Work in the European Parliament - Impressions from my Internship, published by EP intern on March 13, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. From September 2021 to February 2022, I worked as a trainee in the European Parliament for one of the political groups. In this post I am reflecting on my perceptions of the influence of political advisors working in the Parliament and on some other aspects of work there. My overall judgement is that political advisors can have some beneficial influence in some situations given the wide reach of EU legislation among other factors. Working as a political advisor in the European Parliament There are two types of political advisors in the European Parliament: advisors working directly for a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and advisors working for a political group. The former are known as Accredited Parliamentary Assistants (APA) and I will refer to the latter as “group advisors”. The word assistant in APA is a bit deceptive, because APAs usually play a key role in the MEP's political work. Few perform exclusively administrative activities (although many are also responsible for administration). Each political group in the European Parliament also employs advisors who do not work for individual MEPs, but for the group as a whole and in a specific committee. Advisors working for the group tend to be older and more experienced than APAs; often they have previously worked as APAs. Much of the day-to-day work of advisors consists of drafting amendments to proposed regulations or draft resolutions, negotiating such amendments with advisors from other groups to create majorities, consulting with MEPs on amendments, coordinating the group's position across committees and assessing amendments from other groups with regard to the position of their own group or MEP. Important qualities of advisors are focus and speed because they often work under time pressure. Advisors also need to communicate well and should be fine with submitting to the authority of MEPs. The influence of political advisors Advisors have very limited influence on any issue on which there is a party line (and this includes most of the big topics of politics). Then there are other questions which do not directly affect political battle lines. These are topics that are unexciting to the wider public (which need not always mean they are not important) or practical questions relating to a more prominent issue. Most of the work occupying MEPs and advisors probably goes into this category. My impression is that an experienced advisor can make a difference here, because MEPs are to a certain extent dependent on advisors' input: they don't have enough time to deal with all matters in as much detail as advisors and moreover, unlike MEPs, advisors are recruited based on their ability and experience. (However, I'm not suggesting that most MEPs are incompetent.) A capable advisor who genuinely wants to make a difference can do so by putting in more effort in such a situation than an average advisor and providing different input. (However, I do believe that many advisors are motivated beyond professional incentives to do a good job.) Of course, an advisor can also make a positive contribution to legislation through special expertise in unpoliticized areas, especially since the counterfactual advisor is likely a generalist, not an expert. I have not had direct experience of the work of APAs but I have had exchanges with several of them and asked them in particular about their advisory role. The unanimous answer was that MEPs do care about their opinions and advice. Their advantage relative to the group’s political advisors may be that they can establish a far closer relationship to their MEP, possibly making their advice count more. A disadvantage is that APAs’ productivi...