EPSO AST3 in data and statistics: 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 1 is data processing, analytics and statistics, with 423 places; the others are librarianship, with 243, and records and archives, with 298. You apply for one field only. The guide to the whole competition covers what the three share.

Annex II of the notice lists 17 typical duties. Grouped, they describe the whole chain of a statistical or data service:

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 wide: mathematics, statistics, actuarial science or data science; computer science, including AI; any field of engineering; economics, applied economics, business administration or finance; geography, GIS or geoinformatics; physics, chemistry or biology; social sciences with a specialisation in quantitative methods, survey methodology or data analysis; and linguistics with a specialisation in corpus or computational linguistics.

Experience counts if it matches one of the Annex II duties or one of thirteen areas the notice lists, which is more generous than in the other two fields: programming and software development, analysis of large or unstructured data sets, statistical or data modelling and machine learning, high-performance computing, applied statistics or mathematics, database management, business intelligence and market, scientific or policy research, data governance, data validation, presenting results to non-technical audiences (data journalism included), dashboards and mapping, and GIS applications. 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 634 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 423 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. Read duty by duty, it points to questions on:

• Statistical basics: sampling, outliers and missing values, indicators and time series, plausibility checks, the difference between exploratory and standard analysis.
• Data quality and metadata: validation rules, data dictionaries, provenance and lineage, reproducibility, quality reporting on published statistics.
• Tools: what a query or a script does in SQL, Python or R, automation, version control.
• Machine learning and AI at a practical level: classification, anomaly detection, text mining, interpretability checks, and using generative AI with good prompts.
• Protection and disclosure: personal data, statistical confidentiality and disclosure control, basic security safeguards.

At AST level the questions sit closer to doing than to designing: the notice describes duties carried out to agreed standards, not methodology set from scratch. For the EU context, two texts are worth having at hand, although the notice does not name them: the European Statistics Code of Practice, on quality and confidentiality in EU statistics, and Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, on personal data in the EU institutions.

1. Check your eligibility now. Count your years of experience from the date of the diploma you rely on, and ask your school or university 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, and someone who works with data every day can still fail a timed psychometric test they have not sat in years.
3. Put most of your time into the field test, in your language 2, covering every group of Annex II duties, especially the one furthest from your own job.
4. Learn the vocabulary in your second language. Outlier, lineage, disclosure control or time series 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.