BRUSSELS — Nearly 10,000 would-be Eurocrats will have to retake the European Union’s entry test after a technical blunder voided the results of their previous exams.
Applicants who last month sat the online exam to become an EU translator were told Thursday they will have to do it all over again in May because of a “set-up defect” in the test, run by the European Personnel Selection Office.
EPSO is the gateway to a career in the EU civil service, organizing recruitment for institutions including the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU.
“All I can say is EPSO are utterly incompetent and not fit for purpose who couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery,” wrote one member of a Facebook group for applicants of the exam.
The faulty online system — set up by an external contractor — meant applicants were able to select more than one option on the multiple choice components of the online exam.
“This led to a high number of candidates submitting more than one answer, despite the explicit mention in the instructions that there was only one correct answer,” the email to applicants reads.
“EPSO understands well the impact of this regrettable situation and wishes to apologise on behalf of its external contractor,” it adds.
But candidates are fuming they must face the grueling test again.
“This is insane,” wrote one candidate on the Facebook group. “So those of us who are able to follow instructions (one would think a sought-after quality for an EU official) need to go through the whole thing again, get days off at work etc? How to be unfair to absolutely everyone at once lol.”
“How can EPSO be such a failure every single time?” wrote another.
This test was for candidates hoping to get a job as a translator working in one of eight different EU languages. 9,663 people took part
One candidate who received the email Thursday said she had spent an hour every day for several weeks revising for the tests, which include language knowledge, verbal and numerical reasoning.
“I don’t have kids, I’m not studying, I just have a tiring job, which made it difficult to get back to [revise] math in the evening,” she said. “But for people who have kids and families and very demanding jobs, it’s absolutely horrible to go back home and study.”
“I was actually talking to a friend of mine who got this notification and is about to give birth so probably won’t be in the best shape in May,” she added.
A spokesperson for the Commission said that “exchanges are still ongoing between EPSO and the external contractor as regards the financial implications of this situation.”
It’s not the first time the EPSO tests have come under fire. The Commission is also fielding calls to annul recent exams for current staff seeking promotions, amid complaints about incoherent questions and sloppy formatting.
“Yet another fiasco cannot go unanswered,” the U4U staff union said in an email to Commission HR boss Stephen Quest.
The Commission is in a “transition phase” with a new IT tool it started using this year, spokesperson Balazs Ujvari said in an email, adding that “some controlled use of AI, were used to nourish the overall pool of questions from which the tests subsequently drew.”
In 2023, thousands of people saw their tests put on hold after EPSO was warned that it could be entering a legal minefield by conducting its exams only in English.
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