EPSO AST3 in records and archives: EPSO/AST/158/26

EPSO/AST/158/26, published on 6 October 2026 (Official Journal C/2026/4963), builds reserve lists of AST3 assistants in three fields. Field 3 is records and archives management, with 298 places; the others are data and statistics, with 423, and librarianship, with 243. You apply for one field only. The guide to the whole competition covers what the three share.

Annex II of the notice lists 12 typical duties, carried out "in line with relevant international standards" and under the supervision of administrators. Grouped, they follow a record from creation to the archive:

Besides EU citizenship and two EU languages (one at C1, another at B2), you need one of two routes on 11 November 2026:

• Post-secondary studies of at least two years with a diploma in an accepted area, and at least three years of relevant experience after that diploma. A postgraduate diploma or master's in an accepted area, taken after a bachelor's in anything, also counts.
• Secondary education giving access to post-secondary studies, and at least six years of relevant experience after it.

The accepted areas are archival science or records management; information or documentation science or management; digital humanities; history; and cultural or digital heritage. A diploma in business, administration or organisation studies, law, linguistics or literature, international relations or social sciences also counts, but only if the studies included a specialisation in one of those five areas: a law degree alone is not enough, a law degree with an archives specialisation is.

Experience counts only if it matches the Annex II duties of this field, with no extra list of areas. Records management in a company or an administration counts as much as work in a historical archive, if the tasks fit. If you rely on the post-secondary route, you also need a letter from the institution stating the standard length of the programme.

All the tests are remote and proctored. Everyone who applies on time is invited.

The field test is specific to this field: about 80 seconds a question, in your second language. The essay is marked on written communication, not on knowledge. See the guide to the reasoning tests and the guide to the EUFTE.

1. Reasoning is marked first, and only for candidates who completed every test.
2. Those who pass it have the field test marked. Everyone with at least 15/30 is ranked by that score.
3. From the top of that ranking, a limited number of candidates, in principle no more than 1.5 times the places, have their essay marked and their eligibility checked. In this field that is about 447 candidates, plus any ties at the cut-off.
4. Those who pass the essay and are eligible go onto the reserve list, in ranking order, until the 298 places are filled.

So the field test is the only score that counts, and it decides who even gets checked. There is no interview before the list. See how EPSO scores its tests.

The notice publishes no syllabus: the test is "specific to the field". The closest thing is Annex II, which is also what your experience is measured against, and which refers to "relevant international standards". Read duty by duty, it points to questions on:

• The records lifecycle: capture, classification, retention and disposition, transfer to the archive.
• Controls: classification schemes, metadata schemes, retention schedules and disposition authorities.
• Digital preservation: curation, formats, migrations, the requirements of records management systems.
• Archival description: inventories, finding aids, levels of description.
• Security and access: confidentiality markings, access controls, risk and business continuity, handling requests for documents.

The usual international references for those duties are the ISO 15489 standard on records management, the ISAD(G) standard on archival description and the OAIS reference model (ISO 14721) for digital preservation. For the EU context, two rules are worth knowing, although the notice does not name them: Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 on public access to documents of the institutions, and Regulation (EEC, Euratom) No 354/83 on opening the historical archives of the institutions to the public.

1. Check your eligibility now. If your degree is in law, business, linguistics or social sciences, gather the proof of your archives or records specialisation: transcript, ECTS or thesis. Count your years of experience from the date of the diploma you rely on, and ask for the letter with the standard length of the programme. The documents are due by 11 March 2027, but a gap found then cannot be fixed.
2. Do not underestimate reasoning. It only has to be passed, but it comes first. Numerical and abstract share one pass mark, so a strong abstract can carry a weak numerical.
3. Put most of your time into the field test, in your language 2, covering both sides of the field: current records in an organisation and historical archives.
4. Learn the vocabulary in your second language. Retention schedule, finding aid or disposition authority will reach you in that language.
5. Get used to the screen. EPSO's tests run on TAO, with an on-screen calculator and notepad; paper is not allowed.
6. Apply before the last day. The deadline is 11 November 2026 at 12:00 Brussels time, and the ID copy must be uploaded by then too.