Maroš Å EFCOVIC Vice-President of the European Commission Responsible for "Interinstitutional Relations and Administration" Speaking points for the press Press Conference on the recruitment of interpreters and translators for the EU institutions Brussels, 9 July 2010

Source: European Commission (EC) i, published on Friday, July 9 2010.

Ladies and gentlemen.

Next week, the European Personnel Selection Office i will launch new competitions to select interpreters and translators for the EU institutions i.

On 13 July, EPSO will begin the selection procedure for translators into Danish, German, English, French and Slovenian.

A week later, it will launch competitions for interpreters into Bulgarian, English, Dutch, Romanian and Slovenian.

These are the first of EPSO's annual recruitment drives for linguists, which will take place every summer.

They are also the first linguist competitions under the new, modernised and streamlined selection procedures which I first unveiled in March.

Our first experience with the new selection procedures has been very positive and I look forward to a similarly strong response to our search for linguists.

For translators, whose job it is to translate texts, recruitment will be at graduate entry grade (AD5).

For interpreters, who deal with translating oral communication, recruitment will be at both AD5 and the AD7 grade, which requires more professional experience.

Multilingualism has been a cornerstone of the European Union from its early days.

The EU has chosen to use several languages in its communication because EU citizens and the staff of the EU institutions cannot be expected to know all official EU languages.

That is why a multilingual organisation like the EU needs high quality language services.

The role of the language services in the EU institutions is to support and strengthen multilingual communication in Europe and to help Europeans understand EU policies.

Within the EU Institutions, multilingualism is an integral part of policy and decision making for the benefit of the 500 million EU citizens.

In the multilingual and multicultural EU, we can offer an interesting and varied career in an international environment which promotes continuous learning on the job.

The selection procedure for these linguistic posts takes place over two stages.

It starts with a set of Computer Based Tests, which can be sat in any of the EU member states.

For those who obtain the best scores in the first stage, there will be tests in an Assessment Centre which takes place in Brussels.

This will last one day for translators and one and a half days for interpreters.

The assessment phase will allow all key competencies to be properly and reliably tested.

The emphasis is on job-related abilities rather than factual knowledge.

The new cycle will take between 5 and 9 months, rather than up to two years as was the case under the previous system

We want to attract the very best candidates to work in the EU.

I hope we will get a very high number of top quality candidates.

And I hope you can help us by spreading the word in your home countries.

I'd now like to ask David Bearfield to say a few words.

Thank you.

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