An EPSO open competition is a long road: a notice, a Talent Screener, reasoning tests, field tests, a reserve list, and then a wait for an institution to actually call you. It is the route to becoming a permanent official, and for many careers it is worth every month of it. But it is not the only way into the European institutions, and the alternatives are neither obscure nor second-rate. They are simply advertised badly.
The EU institutions and their agencies employ thousands of people who never sat an open competition. They are temporary agents, contract agents, seconded national experts and trainees — and unlike competitions, which come round once a year per profile, these posts open continuously. At the time of writing our board was tracking 123 open vacancies across 42 employers, with 90 of them closing within a month.
The four routes in
Each route has a different contract, a different selection process and a different kind of career behind it. Knowing which one a vacancy belongs to tells you most of what you need before you read the notice.
| Route | What it is | Selected by |
|---|---|---|
| Official (AD / AST) | Permanent post, career grades, the full statute | EPSO open competition → reserve list |
| Temporary agent (TA) | Fixed-term post, often multi-year and renewable, terms close to an official's | The recruiting institution or agency |
| Contract agent (CA / CAST) | Contract of defined length, function groups FG I–FG IV | The agency directly, or the CAST permanent selection pool |
| Seconded national expert (SNE) | National civil servant on loan, typically 2–4 years, paid by the home administration | Via your member state's permanent representation |
If you want the longer treatment of how these categories differ in grade, pay and career progression, our guide to AD, AST and CAST career paths covers it. What follows is the practical half: where the vacancies actually appear.
Why these jobs are so hard to find
There is no single official board for EU agency vacancies. That is the whole problem, and it is worth being precise about it, because the usual advice — "check the EPSO website" — is only about two thirds right.
The EPSO vacancies listing is the largest single source and carries posts from dozens of bodies, but it is paginated and easy to under-read. The EU Agencies Network runs its own portal, which carries bodies that never reach the EPSO listing at all. The European External Action Service publishes its headquarters and delegation posts entirely separately. And a tail of agencies — the European Stability Mechanism, the Banking Authority, the Railways Agency, the Labour Authority — publish only on their own careers pages, in their own formats, with no feed.
The practical consequence: a candidate checking one source sees a fraction of what is open. When we last rebuilt our own source sweep, adding the Agencies Network portal and the EEAS to an EPSO-only crawl raised the number of vacancies found by roughly half.
| Source | What it carries |
|---|---|
| EPSO vacancies listing | The bulk of agency TA / CA / SNE posts, paginated across several pages |
| EU Agencies Network portal | Bodies that do not publish to EPSO — joint undertakings and smaller agencies |
| EEAS vacancies | Headquarters and EU delegation posts worldwide, including funded traineeships |
| Individual agency career pages | A long tail that appears nowhere else |
Reading a vacancy notice properly
Three things decide whether an application is worth your evening, and all three are near the top of every notice.
The deadline, and what it means. EU deadlines are usually midday Brussels time, not midnight, and they are hard. A notice closing "13 October" may stop accepting applications at 12.00 on that date.
The eligibility criteria, read as a filter and not as a wish list. Agency selections screen applications mechanically against the stated minima before a human reads anything. Years of experience, the field of your degree, and the language levels are pass/fail, and a strong profile that misses one of them is rejected without being considered.
The grade. AD 5 and AD 7 are different careers, not different rungs of the same one; FG III and FG IV differ in the tasks you may lawfully be given. The grade tells you the seniority the recruiter has budgeted for, which is a better guide to your chances than the job title.
One more thing worth knowing: several bodies keep permanent calls open with no deadline at all — standing SNE calls and CAST profiles that stay live for years. At the time of writing 13 of the vacancies we track had no closing date. These are worth an application precisely because most candidates only look at what is expiring.
See what is open right now
Vacancies from across the EU institutions and agencies, gathered from every source above into one board and refreshed every fortnight.
Open the EU jobs board → Updated 27 August 2026 · 123 open vacancies · 42 employersDoes any of this need the EPSO tests?
Mostly not — and that is the honest answer, even on a site that exists to prepare people for those tests.
Selection for a temporary or contract agent post is run by the recruiting body. It typically means a screening against the eligibility criteria, then written tests and an interview built around the duties in the notice. There is no reserve list and no competition-wide ranking.
Two qualifications, though. The first is that CAST permanent selection — the standing pool the institutions draw contract agents from — does use reasoning tests of the familiar EPSO family, so the practice transfers directly. The second is that a number of agencies run their own reasoning-style tests at the written stage, because it is the established instrument in this world. If you are working through verbal, numerical and abstract practice for a competition anyway, none of it is wasted on the agency route.
The real difference is one of tempo. A competition is a single, scheduled, high-stakes sequence you prepare months for. The agency route is a habit: watch what opens, apply to the two or three that genuinely match, and repeat. Candidates who treat it as the second of those get in far more often than those who wait for the perfect notice.
Frequently asked questions
Can I work for the EU without passing an EPSO competition?
Yes. An EPSO open competition is the route to becoming a permanent official, but it is not the only way in. EU institutions and agencies also recruit temporary agents, contract agents, seconded national experts and trainees, and those posts are filled through ordinary selection procedures run by each body rather than through a competition and a reserve list.
What is the difference between a temporary agent and a contract agent?
A temporary agent (TA) holds a fixed-term post in the establishment plan, usually several years and often renewable, on terms close to those of an official. A contract agent (CA) is engaged for support or specific tasks under a contract of defined length, in one of four function groups from FG I to FG IV. Both are recruited by the institution or agency itself.
Where are EU agency vacancies published?
There is no single official board. Most appear on the EPSO vacancies listing, many on the EU Agencies Network portal, and some only on the recruiting agency's own careers page. The EEAS publishes its own delegation and headquarters posts separately. At the time of writing, our board tracked 123 open vacancies across 42 employers drawn from all of those sources.
What is a seconded national expert?
A national civil servant temporarily posted to an EU institution, usually for two to four years, while remaining paid by their home administration. Applications normally go through the permanent representation of the member state rather than directly to the institution, and several bodies keep permanent calls open all year.
Do these routes still require the EPSO reasoning tests?
Not usually. Selection for temporary and contract agent posts is run by the recruiting body and typically combines a screening of your application against the eligibility criteria with written tests and an interview. Some agencies do use reasoning tests of the same family, and CAST permanent selection uses them directly, so the practice is rarely wasted.
Competitions open a few times a year. Agency vacancies open every week — the difficulty was never the competition, it was finding them.