EPSO, the gateway to a career path in the EU, is not free from the typical illnesses that are the EU’s self-created limitations, with which it tripps itself. His goal would be to create transparency and fair competition, but due to his slowness and cumbersomeness, he cannot keep up with the pace, and he is also overwhelmed by technical problems.
The latest news about EPSO is that almost ten thousand candidates have to retake their entrance exams due to a technical error. Applicants prepare for the exam for weeks or months, so such a case is extremely frustrating and disappointing.
In recent years, there have been a number of complaints about European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) tests, in particular due to technical errors, data protection concerns, accessibility issues and difficulties in organising tests after the COVID-19 outbreak.
In 2020, EPSO did not advertise new recruitment test opportunities, and the ongoing ones were postponed and the number of them continued to decrease in the following years, leading to a significant backlog of candidates. This was settled by about 2023.
The EU institutions, which were faced with labour shortages, used alternative recruitment channels (e.g. CAST (Contract Agent Selection Tool), temporary agents, own programmes) that were better suited to meet immediate needs, but the issue of fairness and transparency arose in relation to these, as it was more subjective who the institutions invited for interviews.
This once again supported and facilitated the existence and strengthening of the “Brussels shell”.
The question arises, why does EPSO exist to ensure transparency and fair competition in recruitment, if it can be so easily circumvented? Based on the testimony of social media platforms, this caused extreme frustration and dissatisfaction among the candidates, as they were often kept in uncertainty for months about whether they could apply at all. What results have you achieved? The possibilities for filing complaints are also limited and unfair. It was already widely believed that in Brussels it is the connections that really matter if we want to be admitted to the institutions, but EPSO’s mistakes and its problematic operation largely justify this, instead of providing truly fair competition.
It is desperate that even at the gates of the EU, it is this level of insurmountability of technical problems, the shadow of nepotism and the attitude of circumventing the rules and looking for loopholes that greet applicants.
Translated and edited by Kate Small