The EU’s human resources agency notified thousands of Eurocrat candidates that their entrance exams had been delayed due to technical problems with the testing platform: parts of the exam were only in English, Politico reported.
The delay came just weeks after France had sued the Commission over the primacy of English in employment.
The Union’s employment body cancelled the exam on October 16 after Commission lawyers informed the Commission on October 4 that holding English-only tests was a “legal minefield.” Luís Loureiro de Amorim, head of external relations at the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO), declared:
They said that they could not support our selection model.
The EPSO publicly stated that the exam was postponed after reports from hundreds of candidates on technical glitches with the virtual testing platform. Moreover, Loureiro de Amorim explained that even if the platform was working perfectly, the ruling of the Commission’s legal service “would have made us postpone the publication of the competition.”
He noted the bloc’s lawyers insisted that the EU knowledge test, one of the key stages of the exam, should be conducted in all 24 official languages of the Union. The Commission stated that it wanted the EPSO to conduct all exams in the 24 EU languages.
“The new EPSO competition model that contains only written tests facilitates the transition towards having all components of EPSO tests in all 24 EU official languages. This approach has been endorsed by the EPSO’s management board.”
Thousands of EU workers have spent months preparing for the “generalist concours,” the so-called entry point for EU senior positions. The last such competition, held four years ago, attracted 22,000 applicants.
Recently, the Commission introduced a leaner testing system designed to attract more young candidates and correct regional imbalances. However, the postponement of the exam sparked anger among EU diplomats, who sought to place as many of their nationals as possible at the European Commission headquarters.
We have many interesting people who want to come, but we can’t offer them much.
In September, France sued the Commission over an entrance exam that offered tests only in English. An EU diplomat stated that the timing was suspicious.
“It is curious that the Commission’s legal services issued their advice only one month before the November 9 opening date for exam applications.”
Insiders in Brussels accuse the EU executive of undermining the EPSO entrance exams, which are seen as ensuring fairness and transparency as they are taken anonymously.
If we are confronted with these kinds of issues every time we want to run a competition, it’s true that after a while, you have to ask yourself: Do people want to have open competitions? There are other ways of doing things. You can hire people without going through a merit-based system.
The shortfall will be filled by candidates who have passed previous examinations and by employees already working in Brussels institutions, who will be selected via internal competitions organised partly or wholly by the EU executive.
“They [the Commission] want more control. It’s a Commission power grab over EU recruitment. Does the Commission want to continue having EPSO in two or three years? I don’t know.”
However, the Commission has confirmed that the EPSO exams remain the primary route to a career in the EU.
The Commission is therefore relying on external competitions in a substantial way and is expecting EPSO to resume operations and deliver laureates as soon as possible.
