Jobs at the Court

As an employer, the Court is deeply committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse environment, where multilingualism, collaboration, and varied perspectives are celebrated. The Court values the unique contributions of individuals from all backgrounds, promoting equality and opportunity for all.

The Court offers challenging professional opportunities and competitive salaries and benefits (including expatriation, household and child allowance). The Court also offers work from home arrangements and a wide range of training courses to develop the skills of its staff.    

Most of the Court’s staff are recruited from the reserve lists of open competitions organised by the European Personnel Selection Office. These form the permanent staff of the Court.

However, the Court does also recruit temporary and contract staff through calls for applications.

Temporary staff and contract staff

Temporary staff are often employed on posts reserved for permanent staff but for which no permanent staff are available. Their roles will ultimately be filled by successful competition candidates. They can also be employed for short assignments that might require a specific profile. For such posts the maximum length of employment is six years.

Posts in the Chambers of Members of the Court are also filled by staff on temporary contracts. These contracts are limited to the length of the Member’s mandate but can be renewed.

Contract staff for auxiliary tasks are employed to replace officials who are absent for a prolonged period. They also might be employed to reinforce a department that has an unusually high volume of work.

Function groups

Staff are divided into categories, known as “function groups”. These categories have different names depending on whether the post is for temporary or contract staff. Each category covers different types of posts, some of which are recruited more frequently by the Court than others.

1. Function group AD (Temporary staff)/Function group IV (Contract staff) covers posts requiring a university degree or equivalent. In this function group, the Court most frequently recruits legal secretaries or référendaires, who work closely with Judges and Advocates General on cases, legal administrators, lawyer-linguists, interpreters and IT specialists.
2. Function group AST/Function group III includes administrative, linguistic and IT assistants. Candidates require at least a level of post-secondary education or a level of advanced secondary education, as well as three years of professional experience.
3. Function group AST/SC/Function group II covers those carrying out office and administrative tasks, such as secretaries. Candidates require at least a level of post-secondary education or a level of advanced secondary education, as well as three years of professional experience.
4. Function group I (Contract staff only) covers staff carrying out manual and administrative support service tasks. This can include drivers and manual workers who help maintain the Court’s buildings and equipment.

Applying for job opportunities

There are two ways to apply for a job at the Court:

1. You can respond to a specific call for applications for a specific job when one is available.
2. You can respond to our open-ended calls for applications. Certain profiles are frequently required by the Court. In order to ensure that the Court has a wide pool of candidates for these jobs, we have a range of open-ended calls for applications allowing candidates to submit their application at any time. If a vacancy for one of these profiles arises, the list of suitable candidates will be consulted.

The full list of posts and profiles can be found on our job opportunities page.

You can also find available job opportunities for permanent and temporary positions for all the EU institutions and agencies on the EU careers website. This includes contract or temporary agent roles, traineeships and secondments.

For more information on how we handle the personal data submitted during the application process, see our data protection policy.