Candidates can fill in their application form in any of the 24 official EU languages.

As a general rule, candidates must have obtained the minimum entry qualifications specified in the Notice of Competition / Call for Expression of Interest by the application deadline. Qualifications awarded after this date are not taken into account.

However, by way of exception, for the Graduate Administrators competition (AD5), candidates must have a level of education corresponding to completed university studies of at least three years, attested by a diploma, the award of which must have been decided no later than 30 September 2026, irrespective of the application deadline. Please see Annex III of the Notice of competition for examples of minimum qualifications.

You must meet all the eligibility requirements by the closing date for submission of applications. Professional experience acquired after this date will not be taken into account and therefore the application will be considered as not eligible.

Candidates who register to the contract staff selection procedures (CAST/P) cannot link supporting documents to their application(s). 

The recruiting services will inform candidates when to submit documents that support the declarations made in their application form. The recruiting services will determine which documents are acceptable.

Find more information about the employment conditions in the "Conditions of Employment of Other Servants" section in the Staff Regulations.

Concerning the salaries, wages vary according to grade and function, and increase based on merit and seniority as you progress in your career. Also depending on your personal situation, you may also be entitled to extras such as dependent child allowance, expatriation allowance, transport reimbursement or foreign residence allowance.

Details about salaries are available in this table (point 11 for contract staff - updated on 11.4.2025), and further information in the EU staff regulations.

Further information about the rules applicable to contract agents in the European Commission is available in the Commission decision C(2017)6760.

For further information about the employment conditions in other EU institutions and bodies, we invite you to get in touch directly with their Human Resources services.

You can request special adjustments for the Contract staff selection tests (CAST P) by ticking the 'special requirements' box in your application form. You will also be asked to complete an information form on your special needs and provide relevant supporting documents.

Should you be granted reasonable accommodations for the tests organised by EPSO, details will be provided before your test date. Sometimes, arranging these adjustments may delay your test to the next period, and you'll be informed accordingly. EPSO ensures that all pre-selected (shortlisted) candidates are invited and tested under the best possible conditions.

Note: Recruitment tests are organized by the recruiting services. If you need adjustments for these, contact the recruiter upon receiving your test invitation. EPSO will not share your condition or needs with the recruiters.

No. Creating more than one application for the same profile, including with different target languages is not permitted.

You can declare all your languages under ‘Linguistic skills’ in the application form if you have a working knowledge of more than two official languages. This will allow the recruiting services to find your application according to their specific language needs.

EPSO tests will only assess your knowledge of language 1 (L1), which can be any of the 24 official EU languages. It will be tested through the verbal, numerical, and abstract reasoning tests in a form of multiple-choice questions. Your knowledge of L1 needs to be at least at level C1 (proficient user).

Your knowledge of language 2 (L2) (to be chosen from amongst English, French and German, but different from L1) will be tested by the recruiting services. Your knowledge of L2 needs to be at least at level B2 (independent user).

Further information on the above tests is published on our EPSO testing - sample tests’ page.

Recruiting services may organise additional language tests.

If you have any serious concern about the content of a test question please contact us within one (1) calendar day (i.e. by the end of the day after the tests). Provide a clear statement of the circumstances, including your candidate number, as outlined in the Call for Expression of Interest procedure.

If an item is found to be non-compliant with EPSO's quality criteria, the following corrective measures will be applied:

• The item will be corrected or removed from the database;
• Corrective measures may be taken if EPSO finds that a candidate was negatively impacted. In such cases, EPSO will grant to that candidate an additional point for each annulled question, up to a maximum of one point per question in total.

Candidates whose test results cannot be impacted by the outcome of their complaint - either because they achieved the pass scores or because they would not reach the pass score(s) even if their complaint were upheld - will not have corrective measures applied.

Complaints submitted after the deadline or complaints which do not clearly describe the contested question(s) and/or alleged error(s) will not be considered. Complaints merely pointing out alleged issues of translation, without specifying the problem, will not be considered.

If you are no longer interested in being tested and/or recruited for a specific profile/function group, you can simply stop confirming your interest via your EPSO account. Six months after the last confirmation of interest or update to your application for that profile/function group, the application will become invisible to recruiters.

You will be able to reactivate your application at any time in the future.