Would-be translators say EU botched their entry exams — again

BRUSSELS — Dozens of wannabe EU translators who were forced last year to resit a grueling entry exam because a technical blunder have now been incorrectly disqualified, they said.

Some of the nearly 10,000 would-be Eurocrats who did the online test last year and who had to repeat the exercise a few months later because of a “set-up defect” were told they were being disregarded because they hadn’t completed all the exams. They say this was an error and that they’ve done everything that was requested.

“I did sit all of them! So I do not understand! How can they be so careless? What do we do?” wrote one applicant on a Facebook group for candidates. Messages in this group and a separate private Whatsapp chat suggest dozens of people are affected. POLITICO has chosen not to name the people who wrote messages because the Facebook group is private.

The tests are run by the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO), an interinstitutional body that organizes recruitment for institutions including the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. The exams are a gateway to a career in the EU civil service.

“I regret to inform you that your participation [in the process] has come to an end, since you failed to sit at least one of the tests scheduled for the competition,” according to letters sent to two candidates POLITICO spoke to, and screenshotted by several others on the Facebook group for linguist candidates.

There are scores of messages from candidates online who received that message and say they did take part in all of the required exams. Some of those candidates say they contacted TestWe, the platform that runs the online tests, which confirmed to them they had completed all of their tests.

“This is just SOOOO ridiculous,” wrote another person on Facebook, who said she had also been falsely identified as not completing all of the tests. 

Two candidates who were affected told POLITICO they are aware of dozens of people who received the email.

“I was already very annoyed when I had to resit the test,” said one candidate who sat the Spanish-language competition last year and asked to remain anonymous. “Now we see all these errors, all these inconsistencies. I have proof of all the exams I sat. I just don’t think it’s fair.”

“We had to wait 1 year for this crap,” one frustrated person with an anonymous username wrote on the Facebook group.

Another candidate who took part in the Greek language competition, and who asked not to be named because they are considering taking legal action, said: “I took it for granted that this was just a mix up with the emails they sent. But it’s been more than a week now and we don’t have any news.”

POLITICO contacted the European Commission about the issue but did not immediately receive a reply to a request for comment.

‘Now or never’

The translator tests include exams on language knowledge and verbal and numerical reasoning. Successfully passing those tests and getting onto the EPSO reserve list allows people to apply for specific open positions within the institutions. 

The competitions to get on the reserve list only take place once every several years.

“You feel that if you lose this chance, most probably, with all the transformations in the industry like AI, it’s now or never for many of the candidates,” said the Greek-language candidate.

To complicate things further, the reserve lists featuring the successful candidates for some languages — Dutch, Maltese and Danish — of the most recent competitions have already been published, leading candidates to worry that those people have an advantage for jobs.

“The ones who did not have this issue will actually engage in the recruitment process and might have more chances, and that could create an issue as well,” the Greek candidate added.

“How is it so difficult to arrange a test?” wrote another anonymous user on the Facebook group.