They are organised by EPSO for permanent positions as career civil servants, and for a limited number of fixed term contracts in accordance with the Staff Regulations of the EU institutions, on the basis of harmonised criteria.

Graduate level administrators' work include formulating and negotiating draft EU laws, managing EU-wide programmes, or administering aid projects in the developing world.

Assistants and Assistants-Secretaries contribute to implementing policies in various areas of EU activities or are responsible for secretarial and clerical work and ensuring the efficient operation of an administrative unit.

They also play an important role in the internal management of the Institutions, notably in budgetary and financial affairs, HR, IT or librarianship.

Contract agents are recruited, for example, to do manual or administrative support–service tasks or provide additional capacity in specialised fields where officials with the required skills are not available.

The institutions' vacancy notices and employee profiles are published on the EPSO Website and sent to the Permanent Representations of the Member States.

Each Notice of Competition provides a detailed description of the expected job content and qualifications or experience sought.

As in any international and multicultural organisation, the support tasks of Human Resources, Financial Management, IT and linguists are very challenging and important for the working of the institutions.

For contract agents, the pre-selection stage is similar to that of the open competitions for permanent staff and consist of verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning.

At the end of the selection process the highest-scoring candidates are placed on a reserve list for consideration by the institutions for specific vacancies.

In its judgment of 24 September 2015 (joined cases T‑124/13 and T‑191/13), the Court found EPSO's linguistic regime objectionable on the two grounds raised by the Italian and Spanish governments.

The languages for the tests will be selected based on the candidates' choices, taking into account the interests of the recruiting services and the Institutions.

EPSO applies an equal opportunities policy and accepts applications without distinction on grounds of sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation.

However, EPSO takes all reasonable measures that facilitate participation by persons with a disability in competitions on an equal basis with the other candidates.

Instead, the challenge for EPSO is to improve the administration of open competitions – at present, a bafflingly random way of sifting through thousands of applications to place on a list of 'qualified candidates' (rather than, say, for specific vacancies)[citation needed].

Successful laureates have no legal guarantee of recruitment, indeed many wait years on the reserve lists without ever being offered a position.

[5] The cornerstone of the case was an interpretation of Annex III of the Staff Regulations, which led the Tribunal to conclude that only the Selection Board, and not EPSO, has the power to determine the content of questions for pre-selection test.