Job opportunities: How to apply 

Parliament’s permanent workforce are its ‘officials’, who are selected through competitions that are organised at one of three levels:

• AD (or ‘Administrator’) level: Policy, research, analytical and management-level work across a wide-range of areas
• AST (or ‘Assistants’) level: Administrative, technical and other support work across a wide-range of areas
• AST/SC (or ‘Secretary/Clerk) level: Secretarial and clerical tasks across a wide-range of areas

Competitions are mainly organised jointly for all EU institutions by the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO)

Competition notices are regularly published on EPSO’s website on the ‘In progress’ page. The same page also has indicative information about upcoming opportunities that have not yet been published.

The European Parliament occasionally publishes specific selection procedures for civil servant posts directly on its APPLY4EP platform.

Temporary agents can be recruited to:

• fill a Parliament post which has been classified as temporary;
• fill a permanent (official’s) post temporarily;
• assist Parliament’s President, one of Parliament’s 14 Vice-Presidents or one of its 5 Quaestors.

The European Parliament occasionally publishes specific selection procedures for temporary agent posts on its APPLY4EP platform.

Temporary posts are also published on EPSO’s website.

Parliament’s political groups also employ temporary agents, who are selected via procedures published on the website of each political group.

Contract staff are recruited to replace officials and temporary staff members or to reinforce certain services, generally for a limited period.

Contract agents can be employed to perform a number of different tasks. Some contract agents are employed to support organisational change during transitional periods, and provide extra capacity in specialised fields where additional skills are required. Other contract agents can be employed to perform certain manual or administrative support tasks.

Contract agents can be employed to perform tasks in in four different areas:

• Administrative, advisory, linguistic and equivalent technical tasks.
• Executive tasks, drafting, accountancy and other equivalent technical tasks.
• Clerical or secretarial tasks, office management and other equivalent tasks.
• Manual and administrative support service tasks.

The European Parliament occasionally publishes specific selection procedures for contract agent opportunities on its APPLY4EP platform.

In most cases, Parliament recruits contract agents through the EPSO Contract Agent Selection (CAST) database so your first step is to create an EPSO account. If your professional profile matches the specific needs of a recruiting service, you may be invited to sit selection tests and then to an interview.

You can find the list of open CAST profiles on EPSO’s website.

MEPs select their accredited parliamentary assistants (or ‘APAs’).As well as skills, knowledge and expertise, political affinity may also be a selection factor. Parliament’s administration provides the contractual framework but is not involved in the selection of APAs.

There are 19 APA grades and two ‘function groups’ (I and II)

• APAs recruited in function group I mainly perform administrative support and secretarial duties (grades 1 to 13);
• APAs recruited in function group II mainly perform drafting and advisory duties (grades 7 to 19).

APAs work directly for MEPs in their offices in Brussels and Strasbourg, supporting their parliamentary and political work and providing administrative support. You can find the list of MEPs here.

Parliament’s HR services provide and manage the employment contracts according to the conditions applicable for all parliamentary assistants.