EPSO Economist Competition: AD6 Cycle & ECB Alternative

A Competition the Calendar Forgot

EPSO does not have an economics specialist competition open in 2026, and none is announced for the year. The 2026 EPSO calendar — published as the indicative upcoming-procedures list — contains Secretaries, Lawyers, Lawyer-Linguists, Data Managers, ICT, International Affairs Specialists, and Nuclear Inspectors. It does not contain economics, finance, audit, statistics, or budget. For candidates targeting EU institutional economist work, this means the practical entry path is either through the still-pending publication of the EPSO/AD/402/23 reserve list, through specialised temporary-staff vacancies posted by individual Directorates-General, or through the separate ECB recruitment channel.

That said, the framework set by EPSO/AD/402/23 — the most recent substantive economics competition — defines what the next economist NoC will likely look like. Understanding that framework is the foundation for preparation, even before a new Notice is announced.

For the broader context of how specialist competitions are structured, see our EPSO specialist competitions FRMCQ guide.

EPSO/AD/402/23 — The Reference Competition

Published originally in OJ C 220 A of 22 June 2023, EPSO/AD/402/23 recruited AD6 administrators in three fields. After a significant amendment in May 2024, the competition re-opened with a 9 July 2024 deadline. The three fields and their reserve list targets:

Candidates may apply to only one field per competition cycle.

Field 1 covers macroeconomic surveillance, fiscal forecasting, the European Semester, financial-stability analysis, and the modelling work that supports those functions. Field 2 covers financial-market analysis, banking and capital markets policy, the deepening of EMU, and the Banking Union and Capital Markets Union dossiers. Field 3 covers industrial organisation, microeconomics applied to markets and firms, competition policy and state aid, and the economic analysis of industrial policy.

Eligibility — Verbatim

Section 3.3.1 of the Notice defines Field 1 eligibility as follows:

"Have a level of education corresponding to completed university studies of at least three years, attested by a diploma in one of the following fields: economics (including areas such as econometrics, applied economics, and business engineering), finance, mathematics, statistics, physics, or engineering, followed by a minimum of four years of relevant professional experience."

Alternatives: a four-year diploma in the same fields plus three years of experience. A master's, PhD, or equivalent in those fields satisfies the academic requirement irrespective of the field of the preceding studies.

Field 2 extends the eligible diploma fields to include business, accounting, financial engineering, and actuarial sciences. It adds two further routes for candidates whose diploma is outside the listed fields: six years of experience with a three-year diploma, five years with a four-year diploma.

Field 3 narrows the diploma fields to economics or statistics, but accepts an advanced degree in those fields irrespective of preceding studies.

The relevance criterion for professional experience is set out verbatim: experience must have been "acquired in national or international administrations, economic or financial institutions, economic consulting firms or economic think tanks, academic or other research institutions, and is directly related to the nature of at least two duties in field 1, indicated in Annex II."

The 2024 Language Amendment

The original 2023 Notice restricted Language 2 to English. The verbatim justification: "Staff working in the fields covered by this notice use English for performing duties … A satisfactory command of English is therefore indispensable for candidates to be immediately operational upon recruitment."

In May 2024, the amending Notice C/2024/3223 aligned EPSO/AD/402/23 with the full 24-language regime. Candidates now choose any two of the 24 official EU languages — Language 1 at C1, Language 2 at B2, no English requirement. The amendment also introduced a structural change: "the deployment of the case study causes practical difficulties" in a 24-language environment, and the case study was replaced by the EUFTE.

This amendment matters as a precedent. It established that EPSO will, when necessary, modify Notices mid-procedure to broaden the language regime and simplify written assessments. The same logic was subsequently applied to other competitions.

Test Structure — Post-Amendment

After the amendment, the test sequence is:

The verbatim Notice wording on ranking, Section 4.3.2: "A candidate needs to reach a pass score of 15/30 and to be amongst the candidates who score the highest. Candidates who reach the pass score will be ranked in the descending order of the scores obtained. This ranking will be used (i) to determine the candidates who will have their case study scored … and (ii) for the purpose of establishment of the reserve lists." After the amendment, the case study reference becomes the EUFTE.

The scoring cap is also verbatim in the Notice: "The Selection Board will only score the case studies of a limited number of candidates for each field (not more than 1,5 times the number of successful candidates sought per field)." Under the amended Notice this applies to the EUFTE: only the top 1.5× the reserve list size, ranked by FRMCQ, has its EUFTE scored.

Annex II — What Economist Work Actually Is

Field 1 (microeconomics/macroeconomics) Annex II describes nine duty categories verbatim. The most useful ones for understanding the role:

"Ensuring surveillance of and reporting on economic, macro-financial and fiscal/budgetary developments and policies of the Member States, the Euro area, the European Union, or important partner countries (including the United States, China, and EU neighbourhood countries)."

"Developing, using, and evaluating macroeconomic models (e.g. dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models) and other micro- and macroeconomic tools."

"Contributing to the formulation and assessment of economic policies, including in fields such as fiscal and monetary policy, macro-financial policies, energy, employment, education, and other structural policies aimed at promoting investment and growth, public finance, competition, industrial policy, financial institutions and markets."

The DSGE mention is signal-rich. EU macroeconomic surveillance is model-driven, and the Notice's explicit reference to DSGE indicates that candidates targeting Field 1 should be operationally fluent in the modelling tradition used by DG ECFIN and the JRC.

Field 2 (financial economics) Annex II covers analysis of financial markets, financial-institution viability, EMU deepening, and the legislative work on the Banking Union and the Capital Markets Union. Field 3 (industrial economics) covers industrial organisation, microeconomics applied to markets, competition policy, and the economic analysis of industrial policy.

Eight DGs Named — A Career Map

If you are unsure which DG does what, our EU institutions explainer maps each Directorate-General to its mandate.

Section 4.2 of EPSO/AD/402/23 names the recruiting DGs verbatim. This level of transparency is unusual for an EPSO Notice and provides a clear map of where economist hires will land:

"[The Commission] intends to recruit the largest number of successful candidates, in particular for the following directorates general: the Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP), the Directorate-General for Budget (DG BUDG), the Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW), the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), the Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (DG FISMA), the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union (DG TAXUD), and Directorate-General Eurostat (DG ESTAT)."

For candidates choosing a field, the recruiting DGs are a strong indicator of the work they will be doing. Field 1 specialists are most likely to land in ECFIN, BUDG, or the JRC. Field 2 in FISMA or the macro-financial parts of ECFIN. Field 3 in COMP, GROW, or the policy-evaluation parts of JRC and TAXUD.

Implicit Syllabus — What Annex II Doesn't Name

The Notice does not publish a closed syllabus list. The substantive EU economic-governance topics it implies — but does not enumerate — include the Stability and Growth Pact, the European Semester, the Six-Pack and Two-Pack, the Fiscal Compact, EMU deepening, the Banking Union (SSM and SRM), the Capital Markets Union, the ECB monetary-policy framework, EU competition policy, state aid rules, and structural reforms. These should be treated as preparation territory, but they are not in the Notice's literal text.

The Ten-Year Gap at AD7

EPSO/AD/249/13 in March 2013 was the last AD7 specialist economist competition. It recruited 39 successful candidates in macroeconomics (minimum score 62.51) and 27 in financial economics (minimum score 61.09), with final results published in the Official Journal of 7 May 2014.

Between 2013 and 2023, no AD7 economist NoC appeared. Senior economist hires happened through internal promotion from earlier reserve lists and through DG-specific Temporary Staff routes — for example, the COM/TA/COMP/25 Economist at AD5 and AD7 in DG COMP, deadline 29 August 2025, for posts in competition policy and industrial economics. These are not EPSO competitions; they are Commission temporary-staff selections under separate procedures, with applications submitted directly to the DG rather than through EPSO.

Why There Is No AST Economist

The Staff Regulations define AD as the function group performing "advisory, drafting, research and other professional duties" and AST as "executive, technical and clerical duties." Economic analysis falls structurally on the AD side. The closest AST analogues to economics work are Financial Management, Accounting and Treasury, and Public Procurement — recruited in EPSO/AST/156/24 in 2024 with a combined reserve list of 864 across the three fields.

EPSO/AST/156/24 Field 1 (Financial Management) eligibility verbatim, Section 3.3.1: "Have a level of post-secondary education of at least two years, attested by a diploma in economics, public administration, business administration, accountancy, finance/financial management, or law, and have at least three years of relevant professional experience." Alternative route: secondary education plus six years of experience.

The duties are transactional and procedural: budget execution, financial monitoring, contract management, procurement processing, ex-ante and ex-post verification. Not policy analysis, not modelling.

The ECB Graduate Programme — A Parallel Pipeline

For candidates targeting central-banking economist work, the European Central Bank operates its own selection independent of EPSO. The ECB is not subject to the Staff Regulations of EU Officials — it has its own Conditions of Employment.

The flagship ECB recruitment for economists is the Economist Graduate Programme, an annual competition currently open in its 2026 edition through the ECB Talent portal (talent.ecb.europa.eu). Selection differences from EPSO:

• Up to four recent graduates per year, with PhD preferred (vs. EPSO's master's-equivalent baseline at AD6).
• Two-year fixed-term contract, extensible by one year — not a reserve list with potential permanent placement.
• Selection through written exercise, presentation, and interview. No multiple-choice tests, no EUFTE, no reasoning tests.
• Six-month rotation in DG Research is mandatory. Other rotations span Economics, Monetary Policy, International and European Relations, and Macroprudential Policy and Financial Stability.
• Required skills include macroeconomics, monetary economics, international finance, time-series and panel econometrics, and MATLAB, STATA, Python, or R.

The ECB and EPSO routes are non-overlapping in practice. Preparation for one does not prepare for the other.

AST versus AD versus ECB — The Three Tracks

What to Read

For salary expectations as an AD6 or AD7 economist, see our EU career salary guide.

For Field 1 candidates: the body of EU economic-governance regulation, particularly the recast Stability and Growth Pact instruments (Regulation (EU) 2024/1263 and the Fiscal Council Regulation 2024/1264), the Six-Pack and Two-Pack underlying instruments, and the European Semester process documentation. Sound modelling preparation requires fluency with DSGE methodology — the operational literature of the JRC and DG ECFIN is the right level of depth.

For Field 2 candidates: the Single Supervisory Mechanism regulation, the Single Resolution Mechanism regulation, the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive, the Capital Requirements Directive and Regulation, the MiFID II framework, and the ongoing legislative work on the Capital Markets Union.

For Field 3 candidates: TFEU competition provisions, the Block Exemption Regulations, recent Commission decisions in competition and state aid cases, and the methodology underpinning the Commission's industrial-policy impact assessments.

References and Sources

All factual claims in this article are grounded in official EU sources:

• EPSO/AD/402/23 — OJ C 220 A, 22.6.2023
• EPSO/AD/402/23 amending Notice — C/2024/3223, 28.5.2024
• EPSO/AST/156/24 — OJ C/2024/4525, 25.7.2024
• EPSO/AD/249/13 — OJ C 75 A, 14.3.2013
• EU Careers — Final results EPSO/AD/249/13
• EU Careers — Economics administrators hub
• EU Careers — Re-opening of economics competition
• EPSO Annual Activity Report 2024 (PDF)
• ECB Economist Graduate Programme 2026
• ECB Graduate programme overview

Specific EU regulations and directives cited above are accessible through EUR-Lex.