What year was the Treaty of Rome signed? What is the gender balance of Ursula von der Leyen’s team of European Union (EU) commissioners? And what does the European flag look like?
If you can rattle off the answers to these questions, chances are that you will fare reasonably well in the general knowledge portion of the intensely competitive exam to become a well-paid official working for the EU.
You will also need to be competent in two working languages of the EU (so, English plus something else for Irish applicants) and perform well in sections examining reasoning and other components.
The “concours”, as the exams are known, have a certain mystery and lore about them in Brussels for those who have never sat one.
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They are the main route into a safe job in the European Commission, the union’s executive body that drafts laws and steers policy, or the other EU institutions.
A little industry has even developed in Brussels around coaching would-be officials for the test.
“I know people who took it once and succeeded and others there are examples of some people for years not succeeding,” says András Baneth, who runs one of these firms, EU Training.
The section covering knowledge about the EU was an “integral part” of the test for many years, which could include some “pretty crazy questions”, he says. This changed when the concours test was revamped around 2010 and that section was scrapped.
This led to people coming into the institutions who were very competent, but sometimes had “no true enthusiasm” for the EU, Baneth says. The section of questions quizzing applicants on European history and knowledge have since returned.
It is important to have a balance, he says. “Just because somebody happens to know which year that the Maastricht Treaty came into force, would that make [them] a better EU official? Probably not,” he says.
“The perfect candidate is not necessarily the perfect [employee]. Like in politics, the perfect campaigner may not be the perfect politician,” he says.
Some people end up working inside the commission on temporary contracts for years, without ever having taken the test.
Baneth studied law and political science in Hungary and then started an internship at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, which brought him into contact with the EU institutions.
This was around the time Hungary was preparing to join the union, during the 2004 enlargement bringing in 10 new members, mostly from central Europe. There was a drive to recruit people from those new states into the EU institutions.
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“So in 2004 I started working at the [European] Court of Justice in Luxembourg as a lawyer-linguist, which I didn’t like, but it took me three years to look in the mirror and say ‘I really don’t like it’,” he says.
It was around then that he had his first guide to taking the EU exams published, which has been updated every year or so since. He later worked in the commission for several years, but now focuses on his exam coaching company and other projects full-time.
“I was not a bad official, but I wasn’t the ideal EU official because for me, my personal freedom and running my own projects, speaking my mind, being out there, these are important priorities,” he says.
Seasoned Irish staff inside the commission have been sounding the alarm for years about Ireland losing its influence inside the EU’s powerful executive.
There is a fast-approaching demographic cliff edge, which will see about a third of high-ranking Irish nationals in the commission retire within the next three years.
There is a shortage of Irish people in mid-tier roles who could step up into more senior positions over the coming years.
[ My daughter wants to work in the EU. What options are there?Opens in new window ]
Commission officials are European civil servants, but they don’t leave their nationality at the door. Governments like to have a decent spread of their nationals inside the commission, to subtly shape policy as it’s being made, and informally keep their Brussels-based diplomats in the loop on the thinking inside the EU body.
Ireland has been trading on the perception that it punches above its weight “over in Europe”, but that has not really been the case for some time. Reversing the trend that is seeing influential Irish officials in the commission thin out will take years.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has woken up to the problem and is trying to encourage more Irish civil servants and graduates to apply for jobs in EU institutions. Preparing promising candidates to sit the concours is an important part of that effort.
By the way, in case you were wondering, the European flag is a circle of 12 gold stars on a blue background. Bonus points if you knew it was first designed by the Council of Europe, a separate human rights body set up after the second World War.
Some 40 per cent of the “college” of the 26 EU commissioners and commission president Ms von der Leyen, are women.
And the Treaty of Rome, which created a common market between France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands? It was signed in 1957. Happy to be of service - no coaching fee required.
