Is the Europass CV ATS Friendly? What a Parser Reads From the Classic Template

Is the Europass CV ATS friendly? In our test its text survived; its layout was the problem. We filled the classic Europass Word template with a fictional data analyst, exported it to PDF from Word and ran it through the analysis on this site. Every page had a clean text layer, so nothing was lost outright. What changed was order and meaning: labels fused with answers, and the language grid turned into a row of codes.

Which Europass we tested

Europass is the European Union's CV format. Since June 2020 the Europass website has offered an online CV editor with its own designs, and its create page says CVs can be made in 31 languages. An older Word template still circulates: its footer reads "© European Union, 2002-2015", and a copy dated April 2024 is on the website of the EU's External Action Service. That template puts every entry in a table, with a label cell on the left and the content on the right, plus grids for language levels and digital skills.

We tested that Word template. The online editor's designs are laid out differently and we have not tested them, so treat what follows as a finding about the Word template, and check your own export with the steps at the end.

What the extracted text looks like

Selected lines, unchanged and in order, from the text this site extracted from the PDF:

PERSONAL INFORMATION Elif Kaya
+49 30 1234567 +49 151 2345678
WORK EXPERIENCE
03/2021 – present Senior Data Analyst
PERSONAL SKILLS
Mother tongue(s) Turkish
Other language(s) UNDERSTANDING SPEAKING WRITING
Listening Reading Spoken interaction Spoken production
English C1 C1 C1 C1 C1
German B2 B2 B2 B1 B2
Digital competence SELF-ASSESSMENT
Information    Content    Problem
Communication     Safety
processing     creation     solving
Proficient user Proficient user Independent user Independent user Proficient user

Three things happened:

• Labels fused with answers. The left and right cells of a table row share one line of text: "PERSONAL INFORMATION Elif Kaya", "Mother tongue(s) Turkish". Software looking for your name or your native language first has to cut the label off.
• The grids lost their columns. Your five English levels, for listening, reading, spoken interaction, spoken production and writing, arrive as "C1 C1 C1 C1 C1". Which level belongs to which skill was only ever shown by column position, and plain text has no columns. The two-line headings of the digital competence grid come out interleaved, with "Information Content Problem" above "processing creation solving".
• Icons stood in for labels. The template marks the address, phone and email lines with small pictures instead of words. Pictures produce no text, so the phone line arrives as two numbers with no label. This site's analysis still recognised the email address and a phone number by their format.

What did not happen matters too: no text went missing and the parseability checks deducted nothing. The damage is to reading order and meaning, the same problem a two-column CV has.

The Word file is read differently

If you upload the DOCX instead, this site reads each table cell as a line of its own, so labels and answers do not fuse, and parseability again lost no points. The grids still arrive as a column of loose values. Headers and footers are not read at all, so the word Europass in the footer goes unseen and the template is recognised by its labels instead. Other systems handle Word tables in their own ways, which is one more reason to check what comes out rather than assume.

The template also has a line for sex, date of birth and nationality. When the target market is English, which by default means a CV written in English, the analysis flags that line for the date of birth and deducts 2 points, because US and UK style applications leave such details out. For a Turkish or German CV it does not deduct for it.

How this site treats a Europass CV

The analysis recognises the template by the word "Europass", which in the PDF sits in the footer, or by at least three labels only the template prints, such as "Self-assessment", "Spoken interaction" or "Mother tongue(s)" at the start of a line. Labels that ordinary CVs use every day, such as personal information or a driving licence, do not count.

The finding is marked Worth fixing and costs 2 points. Its fix is to rebuild the CV in a single column with plain headings and keep the content. The parser view shows the extracted text so you can see the fused lines yourself. Without an account, paste the text into the quick test; it runs the structure checks, the Europass one included, and lists the three findings that cost the most.

If a job ad or a programme asks for a Europass CV, send one. The instruction outranks any advice about parsers.

From Europass to one column

When you rebuild it:

• Keep the content and drop the table. Use one column, with each heading as a plain line of text, as in standard CV section headings.
• Give each language one level instead of five.
• Label contact details with words, not icons.
• Leave out personal details your target market does not expect.
• Export to PDF, copy all the text out of the file and read it from top to bottom before you send it.

Sources

• Europass, New Europass CV and cover letter online tool, 28 June 2020
• Europass, Create your Europass CV
• European External Action Service, Europass CV template (DOCX dated April 2024, the copy used for this test)

Test run on 26 October 2026 with a fictional person, analysis engine version 1.3.1. Sources checked on the same day.