European Commission internal competitions
The AD5 cognitive assessment: what candidates report
Last updated · with first-hand reports from the 21 September sitting
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: candidates who sat it, a Commission staff union, and prep providers. 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 after the September 2026 sitting
In the days after the AD5 sitting on 21 September 2026, candidates compared notes in a Facebook group for these competitions. What follows is what they said, in our words, with names left out. Most points were made by several people independently. All of it is unofficial.
Information is hidden until you click, and it hides again
This was the point raised most, by a wide margin. In the real assessment, some of the information you need is off screen when the question opens. You click a person's picture or name, a tab, or another element to see the conditions attached to it. Click the next one and the first disappears.
Candidates reported it in several numerical questions, and in the scheduling and room questions where each person has their own constraints. Many said it cost them time in every such question, and that they ended up memorising conditions or writing them down.
What to do: write each person's conditions on paper the first time you reveal them, then work from the paper.
The practice test in your invitation differs from the exam
Candidates describe two practice tests. The one linked from the invitation email shows all the information at once. The one offered on the day, as a practice option beside the exam itself, uses the exam's own interface: four kinds of question, information revealed by clicking, and up and down arrows for moving a bar precisely.
Several candidates met the real interface for the first time minutes before their exam.
What to do: take the practice offered on the day before you start the exam. It is the only official look at the real interface you will get.
Setting a chart exactly is fiddly
Several candidates found the vertical bar charts hard to drag to an exact value, and one had the same trouble with a pie chart. One reported a bar that would not move at all.
What to do: drag the bar close to the value, then use the arrows for the last small step.
Most people are short of time
One candidate finished with four questions unanswered, and another could not send the last one. At 24 questions in 36 minutes there are ninety seconds for each, and the clicking described above comes out of those ninety seconds.
Browser trouble, and what fixed it
Several candidates could not start because the test refused their browser and told them to restart in a different one. Some of them were on Commission laptops. One got in after a colleague cleared the browser's cache and cookies. Another reported a corporate laptop blocked outright.
Support does not stop the clock. One candidate opened support twice over a frozen chart and lost about four minutes.
What to do: clear your browser's cache and cookies the day before, have a second browser installed, and log in early.
Camera on, no screenshots
One candidate reported that your face is checked throughout. Screenshots are reported as not allowed, and several candidates said they did not dare capture a fault on screen in case it disqualified them.
What to do: if something breaks, note the question number and the time on paper, carry on, and report it through the official channel afterwards.
On the desk
Candidates who sat on 21 September confirmed that a calculator, pen and paper are allowed. Several used the calculator on their phone.
From the June 2026 AD7 sitting
Candidate feedback gathered after the first sitting of this assessment, and explicitly unofficial:
- A single timer runs across the whole assessment, with no per-section clock.
- Different candidates received different question sets.
- 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:
- When results arrive. Candidates were asking each other in the days after the September sitting. Nobody had an answer.
- How much of it is interactive. Candidates describe interactive questions in the numerical and the scheduling items. What share of the 24 they make up 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.
Practice built on what candidates describe
Built to match the assessment candidates describe, question type by question type. Five full-length tests, 24 questions each, on a 36-minute clock, forward-only, in the interactive question types candidates describe. The charts have the same two controls candidates mention, a drag and an arrow nudge. Every question carries a worked explanation, so a wrong answer becomes a method you can repeat rather than a mark you cannot explain.
We cannot give you the real questions, and we would not trust anyone who claimed to. One difference is worth knowing: our tests show every condition on screen, as the practice test in the invitation does, where the real assessment hides some behind a click. Build the habit here anyway. Before you touch the answer, note the conditions on paper, because that is what the real interface will ask of you.
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.
Guides
- SHL interactive practice for Commission internal competitions: what to use after EU Training's correction
- Internal competitions in 2027: what is planned, and when to start practising the cognitive assessment
- The question types in the internal competition cognitive assessment, as candidates and the staff union describe them
- After the cognitive assessment: what the 60th percentile means, and what comes next
- COM/AST/109/2026: the AST3 internal competition's cognitive test, and the threshold to know about
- COM/AD/108/2026: the AD5 internal competition's cognitive assessment, stage by stage
- The SHL G+ exam in Commission internal competitions: what it is and how to practise for it
Common questions
Is information really hidden in the real test?
Candidates who sat on 21 September 2026 say so, many of them independently. In several numerical questions, and in the scheduling and room questions, the conditions attached to a person or a tab only appear when you click it, and they hide again when you click the next one. Write each set of conditions on paper the first time you reveal it.
Is the practice test in the invitation the same as the exam?
Candidates report that it differs. The practice linked from the invitation email shows all the information at once. The practice offered on the day, beside the exam itself, uses the exam's own interface, including information revealed by clicking and arrows for moving a bar precisely. Take the one offered on the day before you start.
Are a calculator, pen and paper allowed?
Candidates who sat in June and in September 2026 report that they are, and several used the calculator on their phone. Screenshots, outside help, switching tabs or apps, and AI tools are reported as not allowed. Your own invitation is the text that binds.
Is this the same test as the external AD5 2026 competition?
No, and the names collide confusingly. EPSO's external 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 external 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 rather than 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: candidates' own reports after the June and September 2026 sittings, a Commission staff union, and prep providers. Where a claim rests on a single source, it says so above. If you sat the assessment and something here is wrong, please tell us at support@concourscoachshl.com.