After our April Fool's fake news about virtual reality testing being introduced, today's very real press release from EPSO provides some serious insight into how EPSO will be moving forward.
Here are the most important highlights, simplified.
- Technical challenges acknowledged and solutions sought: in February 2024, EPSO ended its remote proctoring contract and is actively seeking a solution.
- A short-term solution has been initiated to make sure that testing resumes as quickly as possible.
- EPSO is launching a Call for Tender to find a long-term solution for testing, one that can address systemic issues, so that candidates can focus on their tests and not on technical problems.
- Commitment to CAST: The CAST system meets the EU institutions' recruitment needs, and EPSO is committed to continuing organising regular selection procedures from 2024 onwards.
- Reserve lists will be published: EPSO expects to release all reserve lists for competitions that still had Assessment Centres, by summer 2024.
- Commitment to multilingualism with practical communication:
- The Transport and Nuclear Energy competitions were reopened after the decision to adopt a full 24-language system.
- EPSO will continue transparent communication with candidates regarding language options for the tests
- They will also provide consistent information about the organisational culture of EU institutions and languages used day-to-day
- EPSO will help candidates make informed decisions about the EU's language regime (meaning that fluent English and/or French will be required for actual recruitment) before they apply for competitions.
In a separate post on the same day, EPSO also announced that they will reopen applications for the Economics competition and for the Crisis management, Migration and internal security competition in the near future.
EU Training keeps monitoring developments closely and will update you as soon as we have news.
In the meantime, you can check out our preparation materials to be ready when EPSO launches or relaunches a competition.