Lawmakers urged the embattled office that recruits EU staffers to conduct serious reforms to prevent any more “reputational damage … to the EU institutions.”
Members of the European Parliament’s Petitions Committee on Tuesday voted to support a motion addressing mounting criticism of the EU’s recruitment office and its troubled remote testing system.
The remote system replaced in-person exams at European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) test centers in 2023 and is part of the early stages of assessing candidates’ competencies.
EPSO’s bid to modernize recruitment with fewer, faster digital tests suffered repeated technical glitches — prompting a French prospective EU staffer to complain to the Parliament, citing issues such as translation errors introduced by AI.
In response, the Parliament drew up a resolution calling out EPSO and urging it to conduct internal reform, stressing “the urgent need to restore the integrity, transparency, accountability and predictability of EPSO selection procedures in order to repair the reputational damage done to the EU institutions.” Now that the Petitions Committee has voted on the resolution, it will be ratified at a plenary session of the full Parliament in November.
In April, nearly 10,000 would-be Eurocrats were told they would need to retake the EU entry test after a technical blunder voided the results of their previous exams.
“EPSO has shown no understanding whatsoever of accountability,” said Cristiano Sebastiani of the union Renouveau & Démocratie, accusing the agency of “denying everything that could still be denied.”
Olivier Salles, the freshly minted head of EPSO, told POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook that the rollout of EPSO’s new system had been marred by technical hiccups in online testing.
The agency, he said, is “working tirelessly” to improve the process and “deliver a better candidate experience” as part of ongoing audits and lessons-learned reviews.
EPSO has published several lists of successful candidates in recent months — around 2,750 in total. That’s proof, Salles said, that it is “back on track” in meeting EU staffing needs.
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