EHFA advertised an internship in its European affairs work in June 2010. The placement was based at the association's Brussels secretariat, alongside the policy and project work the office existed to carry out.
Brussels was where the association had chosen to be. It opened offices there on 1 December 2007 to be closer to the European institutions, and its European Affairs Working Group worked on four fronts: protecting members from badly designed policy and legislation, identifying opportunities in new policy developments, building support for the health and fitness sector among politicians, and raising the sector's profile with decision makers. An intern working in EU affairs worked on that agenda.
In practice the work meant following the Commission's consultations on vocational education, sport and health and preparing the sector's answers to them. EHFA was a small association with an office in Brussels, and internships were one of the ways it added capacity in a period when the projects, the register and the standards revision were all running at once. It had offered placements in 2008 and 2009, and it advertised again in 2011. The office was what allowed the association to describe itself as representing the sector to the European Union and to other international organisations, rather than only to its own members. See European affairs and working groups.