EPSO verbal reasoning test: format, pass score and practice

The demographic ageing of developed countries results from the combination of two dynamics: the continuous increase in life expectancy and the persistent fall in fertility below replacement level. In the European Union, the share of those aged 65 and over rose from around 14% of the population in 1990 to 21% in 2022, while the share of those under 15 declined over the same period. This twin movement profoundly alters the need for public services: health, long-term care, pensions, adapted housing. The social-protection models inherited from Esping-Andersen's typology (1990) (liberal, conservative-corporatist and social-democratic) respond to these challenges in contrasting ways: the first favours means-tested benefits, the second employment-linked insurance, the third universal services funded by taxation. None of these models is fully shielded from the budgetary tensions linked to ageing, but they do not respond to them with the same intergenerational fairness.

The Conditionality Regulation, in force since 1 January 2021, established a general regime for the protection of the Union budget where breaches of the principles of the rule of law in a Member State affect or seriously risk affecting the sound financial management of the budget or the financial interests of the Union. The Court of Justice confirmed the legality of the regulation in February 2022, dismissing actions brought by Hungary and Poland. In December 2022, the Council adopted measures under the regulation against Hungary, suspending around EUR 6.3 billion of EU funds. In December 2023, the Commission confirmed that the measures under the Conditionality Regulation remained in place, while allowing access to up to EUR 10.2 billion in cohesion funding under a separate assessment of judicial independence. Beyond the Conditionality Regulation, the Commission also relies on horizontal enabling conditions for cohesion policy, on dedicated rule-of-law conditions in the Recovery and Resilience Facility, and on the annual Rule of Law Report. The Commission's 2023 Rule of Law Report assessed all Member States and provided 326 specific recommendations. (Source: European Commission, Rule of Law Report 2023)

Launched by NASA on 5 September 1977, the Voyager 1 probe is to date the most distant human-made object from Earth. It flew past Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980, enabling major discoveries about the rings and moons of these planets, before continuing towards the outer solar system. In 2013, NASA confirmed that Voyager 1 had crossed the heliopause in 2012 (the boundary between the dominant influence of the solar wind and the interstellar medium), thus becoming the first human-built object to enter interstellar space. The probe is still transmitting scientific data in 2025, powered by a plutonium radioisotope thermoelectric generator whose energy is gradually fading. Operations are expected to end around 2030.

Founded in 1919 in Weimar by the architect Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus school deeply renewed thinking about design, architecture and applied art in the 20th century. Its motto, "form follows function", expressed a rejection of gratuitous ornament in favour of useful, beautiful, and industrially reproducible objects. The school gathered major artists (Kandinsky, Klee, Mies van der Rohe) and experimented with cross-disciplinary integration: painting, sculpture, typography, furniture, architecture. Closed in 1933 under pressure from the Nazi regime, which labelled its aesthetic "degenerate art", the school scattered, its members emigrating to the United States and elsewhere. Ironically, this forced exile ensured the global influence of Bauhaus principles, now visible in most contemporary architecture and design schools.

The robotic exploration of Mars has gone through several major stages. NASA has successively deployed the rovers Sojourner (1997), Spirit and Opportunity (2004), Curiosity (2012) and Perseverance (2021). Curiosity confirmed that Gale crater had, in the distant past, harboured an aqueous environment compatible with microbial life, but it did not detect any traces of such life. Perseverance, which landed in 2021 in Jezero crater, an ancient lake delta, collects and stores samples for return to Earth by a planned joint NASA-ESA mission. It is accompanied by the Ingenuity helicopter, the first vehicle to perform a controlled powered flight on another planet, in April 2021. In 2021, China became the second country to land a rover, Zhurong, on Mars. No Martian samples have yet been returned to Earth.

The European Research Council, set up in 2007, is the leading European funding body for frontier research. The ERC funds outstanding researchers of any nationality and age to run projects based across Europe, with the sole criterion of scientific excellence. It awards five main types of grants: Starting, Consolidator, Advanced, Synergy and Proof of Concept. As of 2024, the ERC has supported more than 13,000 projects and has been associated with the work of nine Nobel laureates and several other major scientific prize winners. Its budget under Horizon Europe stands at around EUR 16 billion for 2021-2027, making it the largest single line of funding in the framework programme. ERC grants typically range from EUR 1.5 million to EUR 3.5 million for individual investigators, and up to EUR 14 million for Synergy Grants involving teams of up to four principal investigators. ERC research has produced breakthroughs in fields ranging from gene editing to climate modelling and quantum technologies. The ERC is governed by a Scientific Council, composed of senior scientists from across Europe, supported by an executive agency. (Source: European Research Council, Annual Report 2023)