Back in December 2017, EPSO interviewed Pavel Zbornik, a EU civil servant and member of AEGEE
since 2009. Pavel holds a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering and Management at the Czech
Technical University in Prague, and he’s currently a Business Analysis Assistant in DG Research and
Innovation, working in Unit J5, Common service for Horizon 2020 information and data, in Brussels.
What does your job involve? What are the best/ worst bits about your job? What has been your
greatest achievement?
I support the elaboration of policy analysis on the basis of data and statistics and prepare related
report. It includes management of requests for statistical information (analysis, research, drafting
replies) from internal and external stakeholders and contribution to the improvement of the
reporting environment.
What are the best and worst parts of your job? 
The best would be probably being part of well-functioning international team and be able see
meaningful results of my work. On the opposite side it would probably be having quite often very tight
deadlines, the word urgent has lost meaning for me. It is difficult to describe any concrete achievements from the nature of my work, one could say that meeting my deadlines is an achievement.
What did you do before working for the EU? What year did you start working for the EU?
I was on the opposite side of the barricade, as board member of AEGEE-Europe for 2 years I was
responsible to write and manage grant proposals for EU and other funders. When my responsibilities
in AEGEE finished in 2014 I was selected to be Blue Book trainee in EACEA where I stayed
another two years as external IT Consultant to help with training users and testing internal grant
management tool. I would consider myself working for the EC more as a series of coincidences than deliberately
trying to get it, triggered by moving to Brussels to work for AEGEE-Europe. To use a cliché quote from
Forest Gump: “Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get”.
What has been the most surprising thing about working for the EU?
As an engineer I never paid too much attention to importance of languages and my arrival to the
multilingual environment that the EC is, was sort of a reality check. Having meetings where language is
changed back and forth requires certain adaptation.