AD5, AD7 and the EU Grade Ladder

Every EPSO competition is advertised at a grade. You will see “AD5” on the generalist notice, “AD7” on the audit and IT ones, “AD8” on the artificial-intelligence competition opening this month. Candidates routinely read these as seniority labels and try to work out which one they deserve. That is the wrong question. The grade is not something you aim at — it is a property of the competition, and the eligibility rules attached to it decide whether you may enter at all.

AD, AST and AST/SC: three ladders, not one

Permanent officials sit in one of three function groups, and the letters matter more than the numbers:

• AD — administrators. The policy track: analysis, regulatory work, drafting legal texts, negotiation. Grades AD5 to AD16.
• AST — assistants. Executive and technical support roles. Grades AST1 to AST11.
• AST/SC — secretaries and clerks. A separate, shorter scale, AST/SC1 to AST/SC6.

Contract agents are a fourth thing entirely, on their own scale of function groups FG I to FG IV — not grades on the ladder above, and recruited through a permanently open call rather than a competition with a closing date. If what you actually need is to work out which of these routes suits you, that comparison, with the full pay scales and the allowances that sit on top, is in AD vs AST vs CAST. This page is about the rungs themselves.

The AD ladder, grade by grade

Basic monthly salary at step 1 of each grade, gross, applicable from 1 July 2025 as published in the Official Journal (C/2025/6564). These are basic figures before allowances and before the EU’s own income tax and social contributions — useful for comparing grades against each other, not for estimating take-home.

Two things follow from the table that are worth saying plainly. The first is that the jump from AD5 to AD7 is worth about €1,720 a month in basic salary — roughly 28 per cent — before any allowance. The second is that almost nobody enters above AD8. The upper half of the ladder is reached by promotion over a career, not by competition.

AD5: the graduate door

An AD5 competition asks for three things, and the third surprises people:

• Citizenship of an EU member state.
• A university degree based on at least three years of study. A bachelor’s is enough.
• Two official EU languages — your main language at C1 or above, your second at B2 or above. In the 2026 cycle the second language is no longer restricted to English, French or German.

There is no professional experience requirement. That is genuinely unusual: a labour market where entry-level postings routinely demand three years of experience does not often produce a graduate-entry route into an administration of this size. It is also why AD5 draws the fields it does — the 2026 generalist competition, EPSO/AD/427/26, attracted a record number of applicants for a reserve list of around 1,490 places. The detail is covered in the AD5 generalist guide.

AD7: the experienced-specialist door

This is the grade nothing on the internet explains properly, so here it is. AD7 is not “AD5 plus two promotions” that you can apply for. It is a separate entry point, used when the institutions need people who already know a field. The eligibility rule is what defines it, and it works as a sliding scale: the shorter your qualifying studies, the more years of work you must show.

The experience must have been acquired after the degree was awarded, and it must be relevant to the field you apply for. Those figures are from the 2026 IT competition; the exact years vary between notices, so read the one you are applying to. Two AD7 competitions ran in 2026: EPSO/AD/428/26 in audit, and EPSO/AD/429/26 for IT professionals across four fields. Both closed to applications and are now in the selection phase — see the audit guide and the IT guide.

Why one competition is AD5 and the next is AD7

The grade follows the job, not the candidate. When the institutions need people who can be trained into policy work across any portfolio, they open a generalist competition at AD5 and select on reasoning ability, because that is what predicts performance when the subject matter is not yet known. When they need someone who can audit a spending programme or run a cloud migration on arrival, training is not an option and the competition is opened at AD7 or AD8, with an eligibility gate that filters for the experience and a field-specific test that decides the ranking.

Steps are not grades

Each grade contains steps, and the two move for different reasons. Steps advance with time served in the grade; the grade itself changes only by promotion, which is decided on comparative merit rather than automatically by seniority. The size of the step effect is visible in the official scale: an AD7 at step 5 is on €8,911.48, which is the same basic salary as an AD8 at step 1. Time in grade genuinely matters. The precise mechanics are set by the Staff Regulations, and that is the document to read if you need the rule rather than the shape of it.

Which grade is recruiting right now

If you are reading this in September 2026, the AD8 competition is the one with a door still open. What it wants and how to use the weeks before the deadline is in the AI and cybersecurity guide.

Frequently asked questions

Whichever grade you are eligible for, the reasoning tests are the common gate — the same verbal, numerical and abstract papers sit at the front of the generalist and specialist competitions alike. Start with a free practice set and find out where you actually stand.