The generally used French equivalent for EU recruitment exams, meaning "competition", referring to the competitive nature of the EU selection procedures. The reason for this competition is that in all cases there are 2 factors that are considered when drawing up reserve lists: each exam has an objective pass mark which is usually 50-70% of the total scores of the given exercise to pass, otherwise the candidate is ejected from the exam (e.g. a verbal reasoning exam may have 20 total points of which 10 must be obtained at minimum), while the second benchmark is a list of the best achieving candidates of whom only the top x will be invited to the Assessment centre or will be placed on the reserve list of eligible laureates.
Given that the pre-2010 EPSO system had been based on the French administrative examination system, even English-speakers would refer to the exams as "concours".
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