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On the basis of two surveys carried out on different scales, this article, exploring the relationship of union activists to European institutions, analyzes some distinctive forms of internationalization. The first survey was of the European Confederation of Trade Unions representing trade unions in the European institutions in Brussels. It shows how, for a whole generation of union activists, often of lower and middle class origin and with little formal education, accession to European posts leads to the mobilization of a “militant international capital”, presently threatened by the place given to expertise within European trade union institutions and by competing notions of what trade unionism is. The second survey, made among European works councils, has to do with the conditions of the spread of this international savoir-faire to on-the-job activists. Despite the obstacles limiting the possibilities of the internationalization of union activities, there is an emergence of militant European networks mobilizing new kinds of resources, notably through recourse to immigrants. The article thus analyzes the slow and delicate process of the acquisition and spread of internationalist dispositions that translates as well into a new-found capacity on the part of workers’ representatives to bring European institutional, legal and symbolical resources to bear in labour conflicts.