EPSO EU knowledge test: format, topics and how it counts

A test of factual knowledge about the European Union, used in EPSO's generalist competitions. Unlike the reasoning tests, it is not about working something out: it is about knowing it. It is sat in your language 2.

It is one of the tests that decide the ranking. In the specialist competitions its place is taken by the field test, and CAST Permanent does not have it.

A single direct sentence and four options, with no text to read first. In EPSO's official sample test they look like this:

• Which agreement established the EU in its current form? EPSO's answer is the Treaty of Lisbon, not Maastricht, which created the Union.
• Which institution interprets EU law? The Court of Justice.
• Which city does not give its name to a treaty? The Hague.

The first one is the lesson. The reasonable answer and the official one are not the same, and the question is worded so that both can be defended. What the test rewards is knowing exactly what the question asks.

The wrong options in EPSO's samples follow four patterns:

• Real but wrong. All four options are real treaties, and only one fits the question.
• Plausible but invented. Next to the real agency, options with names that sound right and do not exist.
• Partly right. All the options are real EU initiatives, but only one is the one the question describes: the European Green Deal, not another energy package.
• Negative framing. "Which is NOT…" questions, which punish reading too fast.

In AD5 it is marked after the reasoning tests, and only for candidates who passed them. With verbal reasoning and digital skills, it makes up the whole preliminary score. See how EPSO scores its tests and the guide to the internal competitions.

The areas the questions come from are stable:

• The Treaties in force: the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, and what each earlier treaty changed.
• The institutions and their roles: Parliament, European Council, Council, Commission, Court of Justice, European Central Bank and Court of Auditors, and who does what.
• Decision-making: the ordinary legislative procedure and who proposes, amends and adopts.
• EU policies: the main current strategies and programmes, with their exact names.
• Agencies and bodies: what each one does and where the invented names give themselves away.

EPSO announces preparation material for this test on its website: start with what it points to before anything else.

1. Work at about 80 seconds per question in AD5, and 60 seconds in the internal format.
2. Study in your language 2. The names of institutions, procedures and policies will come to you in that language.
3. Learn exact names, not approximate ones. Many wrong options are one word away from the right one.
4. Read every question to the end. Negative questions are there to catch whoever answers after the first half.
5. Practise telling similar things apart: treaties that created, reformed or renamed; programmes with similar goals.