Brussels, October 16, 2023

The European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) has decided to temporarily pause automated proctoring of its online tests and explore other possible solutions to ensure a better candidate experience in future. This decision does not mean that EPSO will give up online testing and its many advantages.

In recent weeks, EPSO has continued to receive reports of technical difficulties experienced by many candidates during their tests despite the office’s attempts to address these difficulties. The steps taken by EPSO external contractor responsible for test delivery have not proven sufficient and do not meet the required standards.

EPSO aims to provide a testing platform that offers a steady digital experience, allowing candidates to focus on the content of their tests and not on troubleshooting. EPSO introduced automated proctoring for its online tests earlier in 2023, in line with its commitment to provide candidates with an optimal testing experience.

EPSO plans to publish one more competition for Nuclear inspectors and policy officers on 19 October 2023, and then pause the publication of open competitions until the end of the year.

Testing will also be put on pause until the right conditions exist for testing to take place. Retesting sessions for the Economics and Crisis management, migration and internal security competitions will be given priority.

Dates will be confirmed as soon as possible – some rescheduling is likely. EPSO will also run the two CAST testing sessions planned for the end of this year.

“We understand that this decision will disrupt the plans of those intending to apply to the AD5 Generalist competition, which will no longer be published on 9 November 2023, as initially planned,” wrote the institution on its website. “We are mindful of how much interest this competition generated in all 27 Member States. This was not an easy decision to make. EPSO remains committed to making this happen in 2024, under the right conditions.”

EPSO will continue to update its website and social media accounts with more information about its coming plans.

October 17, 2023 update

EPSO has announced the following re-testing sessions:

• The retesting session for the Economics competition will take place on Monday, 13 November 2023, and not on Friday, 20 October 2023, as initially planned. Important: candidates already invited to attend the retesting session on 20 October 2023, will receive a cancellation e-mail from EPSO’s external contractor in due time. EPSO does not know exactly when this message will be sent out, but we can already confirm that the retesting session of 20 October 2023 is cancelled.
• The retesting session for the Crisis management, migration and internal security competition will take place on Friday, 24 November 2023 and not on 25 October 2023, as initially planned.
• The CAST-P ‘testing window’ will take place on  6 and 7 December 2023, and not on 29 and 30 November 2023, as initially planned.
• The CAST-P ‘testing window’ of 23 and 24 October 2023, remains the same. There are no changes to this planned ‘testing window’.

Further inquiries: EPSO Communications Office communications@epso.europa.eu