European Commission internal competitions
The AD5 cognitive assessment: what candidates report
The cognitive assessment sits at stage one of the Commission's internal competitions. It is an eligibility gate: candidates who do not clear it do not reach the EU knowledge test, the written assignment or the oral, whatever else their file says.
Read this first. The Commission does not publish these notices. They are not in the Official Journal or on EUR-Lex; they reach eligible staff through internal channels. So nothing below is the Commission speaking. Everything here is attributed to who reported it, and where sources disagree or go quiet, this page says so rather than filling the gap.
What is consistently reported
Reported alike by a Commission staff union with no product to sell, and by prep providers covering the competition:
- Questions
- 24
- Time
- 36 min
- Threshold
- 60th pct
- Difficulty
- Adaptive
Three reasoning types are covered: numerical, inductive and deductive. The union describes it as “an adaptive computer-based cognitive reasoning assessment carried out by an external company”. Note what that wording does not do: it does not name the provider, and neither will we, because the Commission has not.
At roughly 90 seconds a question, the constraint most candidates describe is time rather than difficulty.
What candidates reported about exam day
From candidate feedback gathered after the June 2026 AD7 sitting, and explicitly unofficial. Useful precisely because no official page covers it:
- One overall timer for the whole assessment, not one per section.
- Different candidates received different question sets.
- Some interactive items: dragging lines, adjusting bars, clicking chart and person elements.
- Allowed: a phone used as a calculator, a physical calculator, pen and paper.
- Not allowed: screenshots or photographs, outside help, switching tabs or apps, AI tools.
- A mouse was reported as easier than a touchpad. Edge gave several people trouble.
- The assessment includes practice questions before scoring begins.
What nobody can tell you reliably
Being straight about this is more useful than pretending otherwise:
- How much of it is interactive. Candidates report some interactive items, which implies a mix. The proportion is unknown. Anyone stating a figure is guessing.
- The exact order of questions. One report describes a repeating numerical, deductive, inductive cycle. A single report is not enough to build on.
- Whether other institutions use it. The European Parliament publishes a candidate guide naming a different supplier altogether, so this is a Commission matter as far as the evidence goes.
How this site helps
We cannot give you the real questions, and we would not trust anyone who claimed to. What candidates who sat the assessment and then used this platform tell us is that it is the closest thing to the real interface they have found. What we give you is the format: five full-length tests, 24 questions each, on a 36-minute clock, forward-only, in the interactive item types candidates describe. Every question carries a worked explanation, so a wrong answer becomes a method you can repeat rather than a mark you cannot explain.
The first test is free, timed, and needs no payment details. That is deliberate: sit it before you decide whether the rest is worth anything to you.
Common questions
Is this the same test as the open AD5 competition?
No, and the names collide confusingly. EPSO's open AD5 competitions use the classic reasoning battery, which EPSO's own public FAQ describes as verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning in multiple-choice form. The internal Commission competitions use a different, adaptive cognitive assessment. If you are applying through an open competition advertised publicly across the member states, this site is not built for your exam.
What language will I sit it in?
Prep providers report that the assessment is taken in your language 2, the language of competition, which the notice restricts to English, French or German, and which must differ from your first language. We have not seen this confirmed by a non-commercial source, so treat it as reported rather than established, and check your own competition notice.
What score do I need?
A Commission staff union and the prep providers covering the competition all report a threshold at the 60th percentile of a benchmark population, with anything below it meaning automatic ineligibility. Your result is a percentile rank, not a mark out of the number of questions.
Can I practise the real questions?
No, and you should be wary of anyone claiming otherwise. Nobody outside the process has the live question bank. What you can practise is the item types candidates describe, under the same time pressure, which is the part that actually transfers.
Sources for this page are recorded in our research file, with the date each was read. Where a claim rests on a single commercial source, it is marked as such above. If you sat the assessment and something here is wrong, please tell us at support@eucognitiveprep.com.