Europass CV: what it is, how to make it and if it passes the ATS

The Europass CV is the European Commission's CV model: free, the same in every EU country, and available in 31 languages. You make it in the official Europass editor, and it works very well for what it was designed for, which is applying to European programmes and calls. For a private company that receives CVs through a job portal, however, its layout is not what selection software reads best, and it is worth sending a different format.

What the Europass CV is (the "European CV")

Europass is a set of free tools from the European Commission for presenting studies, experience and languages the same way across Europe. The CV is the best known of them. When people talk about a "European CV", a "currículum europeo" or "Europass", they almost always mean this document.

What sets it apart from any other CV:

• Fixed structure. The sections are given: personal information, work experience, education and training, languages, digital skills and others.
• Languages on the Common European Framework (CEFR). Each language is self-assessed from A1 to C2, skill by skill (understanding, speaking, writing), in a table.
• The same format in every country. A committee in Germany and another in Portugal read your CV with the same structure, which is exactly what it was created for.

How to make your Europass CV, step by step

1. Open the official editor at europass.europa.eu, in the section for creating a CV. It is free.
2. Decide whether to create a profile. Without registering you can use the editor and download the CV, but not save it to continue later. With a profile, the CV stays in your Europass library and you can keep several versions.
3. Fill in the sections. Experience and education from most recent to oldest, with dates, and each language with its CEFR level.
4. Choose the design and the document language. The editor offers several templates and 31 languages.
5. Download the file.

If you have an old Europass made with the previous editor and downloaded as PDF or XML, the current editor can import it, so you do not have to type it again.

Does the Europass CV pass the ATS?

An ATS (the software companies use to filter applications) does not look at your CV the way a person does. It pulls the text out of the file and tries to rebuild what each piece is: your name, your job titles, your dates, your languages.

The Europass CV has two traits that complicate that reading:

• A layout of tables and columns. The classic model puts the labels in a column on the left and the content on the right. A parser that reads left to right can merge the two columns onto the same line. We show it with a real extraction in does the ATS read columns and tables?.
• The languages table. The CEFR self-assessment is a grid. Read in page order, the levels end up as a row of letters ("B2 B2 B1 B1 B2") separated from the language they belong to.

The CV does not come out blank: the experience and education paragraphs usually read fine. What gets lost most is languages and skills, which Europass puts in boxes. And it depends on the template you chose, so the useful thing is not to assume but to check yours: upload it to the converter and you will see which parts the software cannot read.

When to use Europass and when not to

Use it when you are asked for it. Calls from European institutions, scholarships and mobility (Erasmus+), some internship programmes and processes whose rules require it. There the common format is an advantage: whoever evaluates compares every candidate with the same structure. If the rules ask for Europass, send Europass.

Do not use it by default for private companies. If you apply through a job portal or a company website, the CV is read first by a system and then by a person who reviews dozens in little time. Both are better served by a one-column CV, with standard headings and real text, than by a table with every field of the European model, many of them empty. That is the case with the portals of large employers in Spain, such as Mercadona or Inditex.

When in doubt, keep both versions: the Europass for the calls that ask for it and a one-column CV for everything else. The content is the same.

How to turn your Europass into a CV the ATS can read

You do not need to rewrite it. The content of the Europass is already in order; only the form changes:

• One column, no tables, with the usual headings: Experience, Education, Languages, Skills.
• Languages one per line, with the level in text: English: B2 (CEFR). The level is still read and no longer depends on the grid.
• Only the sections with content. Europass invites you to fill in fields that an ordinary CV does not need.
• Minimal personal details. Name, city, phone, email and LinkedIn. The photo is optional: in Spain it is common, but no ATS needs it, as we explain in ATS CV with a photo.

The quick way: upload your Europass PDF to the converter. You see which parts the ATS cannot read and you get the same content in a single column, which you can edit. If you would rather start from a design, there are the ATS resume templates.

Europass CV in English

The editor lets you make the CV in any of its 31 languages, English included. But if the posting is from a company in the UK or Ireland, the same applies as in Spain: a one-column CV reads better than the Europass model. If it is for the United States, the document is not even called a CV but a resume, and it has other rules: we explain them in CV in English.

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