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BRUSSELS — The EU’s personnel agency told thousands of wannabe Eurocrats their entry exams had been postponed due to technical issues with the testing platform. The real reason: Parts of the exam were only in English.
The bloc’s hiring body scrapped the October 16 exam following advice from the Commission’s lawyers on October 4 that conducting tests only in English was a legal minefield.
“They said that they could not support our selection model,” Luís Loureiro de Amorim, head of external relations for the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO), told POLITICO.
EPSO wrote in a public statement that the exam was deferred after hundreds of candidates reported technical glitches with the virtual testing platform.
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But Loureiro de Amorim explained that “even if we had had an excellent platform to test candidates, this alone [the ruling from the Commission’s legal services] would have made us postpone the publication of the competition.”
The bloc’s lawyers insisted that the EU knowledge test — one of the key planks of the exam — must be offered in all the bloc’s official 24 languages, he added.
The Commission said that it wants EPSO to hold all exams in the EU’s 24 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,” a Commission spokesperson said.
But the EPSO official claimed the Commission’s own departments are pushing to have the English-language competence of aspiring officials measured in the exam process.
The decision was a cold shower for the thousands of aspiring EU staffers who had spent months preparing for the “generalist concours” — a popular entry point to work for the EU executive. The last hiring contest of this kind was held four years ago, and attracted 22,000 applicants.
The Commission recently unveiled a leaner testing system designed to attract more young applicants and correct regional imbalances. But the exam’s postponement fueled anger among EU diplomats who had been keen to get more of their nationals through the Berlaymont’s front door.
“We have many interesting people who want to come, but we can’t offer them much,” said an EU diplomat who was granted anonymity, like the others quoted in the story, to discuss internal matters.
A second EU diplomat described the Commission’s decision as “very unprofessional.”
This is only the latest flareup in a hard-fought battle over the linguistic hegemony of the Brussels institutions.
France sued the Commission in September over an entry exam that offered tests only in English. The EU executive did not comment on whether it had issued its legal advice in response to the appeal by Paris, but a third EU diplomat said the timing was suspect.
“It is curious that the Commission’s legal services issued their advice only one month before” the November 9 opening date for exam applications, the EU diplomat said.
Brussels insiders accuse the EU executive of undermining EPSO’s entrance exams, which are seen as guaranteeing fairness and transparency given that they are sat 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?” said Loureiro de Amorim.
“There are other ways of doing things. You can hire people without going through a merit-based system.”
The decision to put off the exam left a gaping hole in the Commission’s staffing roster. The shortfall will be filled by candidates who passed previous exams and staffers already working for Brussels institutions, who will be picked through internal competitions managed partly or entirely by the EU executive.
This has reignited fears that the Commission is trying to flex its muscles in the bloc’s hiring procedures.
“They [the Commission] want more control. It’s a Commission power grab over EU recruitment,” said the third diplomat.
“Does the Commission want to continue having EPSO in two or three years? I don’t know.”
But the Commission confirmed that the EPSO exams remain the main pathway toward an EU career.
“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.”
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