MPP student: William McNeill

Where: Brussels, Belgium

Organisation: Milieu Law and Policy Consulting

Until now I had zero experience working an office job, let alone one in policy. My first question: “What do you actually do all day?”. Having worked at Milieu for one month, I think I can tell you – but also understand why it’s difficult to give me a simple answer.

Milieu began as a tiny law consultancy firm, created from necessity. European Commission contracting rules only allow EU firms or people subcontracted by an EU firm to apply for contracts. The cliché about “the rest is history” comes to mind. Milieu now employs around 60 people in law, policy and business development. “Milieu” means “environment” in Dutch, so although Milieu specialises in the environment, they have expanded into all sorts of sectors including energy, migration, justice, health, technology, and finance. Over 90 % of Milieu’s work is contracts for the European Commission or Parliament. New contracts are published every day and Milieu’s business development team sorts out what contracts Milieu can and wants to do, the workload, price, and the chances of winning. To compete for a contract, a proposal and various supporting documents have to be written, collated and properly submitted on time to precise specifications. So when you are not fulfilling contracts, you are preparing proposals for the next contracts.

Arriving at the end of summer gave me time to settle in and meet some colleagues before most of the people, and work, came back from holiday. The first days I was very unsure of myself, but a lot of the required skills was just experience. Otherwise, skills in research, writing, Excel and Outlook/Teams/Slack were beneficial. Milieu offers regular training, and I learnt about business development and European environmental and climate law.