Common traps in the EU knowledge test (and what AI tools get wrong)

Last checked against sources: 26 October 2026. Every fact below comes from an official text we read on that date. Each trap has three parts: the wrong belief, the right fact, and the source.

Why these traps work

The test's wrong options are usually true EU facts placed in the wrong slot: the neighbouring institution, the next majority up, last mandate's figure, the proposal instead of the law (our reading of how such items are built). So a half-remembered number is more dangerous than a blank. The fix is to learn each figure with its label: what it counts, from when, and in which document.

Institutions and voting

1. The size of the European Parliament

• Wrong: Parliament has 751 members today.
• Right: 720 seats for the 2024-2029 term. 751 is the Treaty ceiling (750 plus the President). Parliament went from 751 to 705 seats after the United Kingdom left, then to 720 for the 2024 elections. No member state may have more than 96 seats or fewer than 6.
• Source: European Council Decision (EU) 2023/2061, Article 3 (the 27 national figures add up to 720); Article 14(2) TEU; Parliament's fact sheet 21 (April 2026).

2. The Treaty of Lisbon's two dates

• Wrong: Lisbon is a 2009 treaty, or it entered into force in 2007.
• Right: It dates from 13 December 2007 and came into effect on 1 December 2009. A question will say which event it means: read the verb.
• Source: Parliament's fact sheet 5 on the Treaty of Lisbon (April 2026).

3. Qualified majority: 55, 65 and 72

• Wrong: A qualified majority is 72% of members, or 65% of members and 55% of the population.
• Right: The standard rule is at least 55% of Council members, at least 15 of them, representing at least 65% of the EU population. 72% of members applies only when the Council does not act on a proposal from the Commission or the High Representative. A blocking minority needs at least four members.
• Source: Article 16(4) TEU; Article 238(2) TFEU. See how qualified majority is calculated.

4. Counting the College

• Wrong: The College has six Executive Vice-Presidents and 19 Commissioners.
• Right: The Commission's College page lists the President, five Executive Vice-Presidents, the High Representative and Vice-President, and 20 Commissioners: 27 members. Parliament's fact sheet 25 (April 2026) gives six Executive Vice-Presidents, the High Representative and 19 Commissioners, which does not match. Count from the Commission's own page.
• Source: European Commission, College of Commissioners page (read 26 October 2026); Parliament's fact sheet 25.

Budget, audit and discharge

5. The 1.26% figure

• Wrong: The current long-term budget is 1.26% of EU GNI.
• Right: 1.26% of GNI is the Commission's proposal for the 2028-2034 MFF (16 July 2025), and it includes 0.11% of GNI for repaying NextGenerationEU. The current 2021-2027 MFF's initial amount was 1.13% of GNI. A proposal is not law until the Council adopts it.
• Source: COM(2025) 570 (16 July 2025); Parliament's fact sheet 29 on the MFF (November 2025). More in the MFF explained.

6. How the MFF regulation is adopted

• Wrong: By the ordinary legislative procedure, or by the Council alone after consulting Parliament.
• Right: The Council adopts it unanimously under a special legislative procedure, after obtaining Parliament's consent, given by a majority of its component members. Do not mix this up with the Own Resources Decision, where the Council acts unanimously after only consulting Parliament (Article 311 TFEU).
• Source: Article 312(2) TFEU.

7. Who grants discharge

• Wrong: The Council grants discharge, or the Court of Auditors does.
• Right: The European Parliament grants the Commission discharge, acting on a recommendation from the Council. The Court of Auditors audits the accounts and gives Parliament and the Council a statement of assurance; it grants nothing.
• Source: Article 319(1) TFEU; Article 287(1) TFEU. See the budget cycle and discharge.

8. Horizon Europe has more than one total

• Wrong: Horizon Europe's budget is one fixed figure.
• Right: The Regulation sets EUR 86 123 million plus EUR 7 953 million in current prices, and the Commission's research page gives an indicative EUR 93.5 billion after the MFF mid-term review. The figures differ by what they include. Learn the programme's structure, and treat any single total in a question with care.
• Source: Regulation (EU) 2021/695, Article 12(1); the Commission's Horizon Europe page (read 26 October 2026).

The mandate and the Commission's own rules

9. The Green Deal as a current priority

• Wrong: The European Green Deal is one of the 2024-2029 priorities.
• Right: It is not one of the seven chapters of the 2024-2029 Political Guidelines, and the Commission's priorities page does not name it. The Guidelines mention it as earlier work and promise to stay the course on its goals.
• Source: Political Guidelines 2024-2029 (18 July 2024); the Commission's priorities page. See the seven chapters.

10. The simplification numbers

• Wrong: The target is EUR 37.8 billion; or 35% is the target for all companies.
• Right: Cutting recurring administrative costs by 25% means EUR 37.5 billion by the end of the mandate. The targets are at least 25% for all companies and 35% for SMEs. The Commission's simplification page reports EUR 15 billion in net annual savings from 2025's omnibus proposals and other initiatives. No official source we found gives 37.8.
• Source: COM(2025) 47 (11 February 2025), section III; the Commission's simplification page (a living page; check that an entry predates your cut-off). See simplification and the omnibus packages.

11. Reuse, buy, build

• Wrong: The Commission's digital strategy says build first, or buy then reuse.
• Right: The order is first reuse, then buy, then build, which the strategy calls the dual pillar approach.
• Source: European Commission digital strategy, C(2022) 4388 (30 June 2022), section 2.4.

12. The Rules of Procedure's article numbers

• Wrong: The written procedure is Article 12 of the Commission's Rules of Procedure.
• Right: That was the old numbering of C(2000) 3614. Since Decision (EU) 2024/3080 of 4 December 2024, the written procedure is in Articles 17 to 28, the empowerment procedure in Articles 29 to 35 and the delegation procedure in Articles 36 to 40. Older study material still cites the old articles.
• Source: Decision (EU) 2024/3080, Article 6 and Chapter III. See how the Commission takes decisions.

A trap in question form

This is our own question, written from Article 234 TFEU. Every wrong option is a real Parliament majority from another article.

By what majority must the European Parliament carry a motion of censure on the Commission?

• A. A majority of the votes cast
• B. A majority of its component Members
• C. A two-thirds majority of the votes cast, representing a majority of its component Members
• D. A three-fifths majority of the votes cast, representing a majority of its component Members

Answer: C. A is Parliament's default rule (Article 231 TFEU). B is how Parliament elects the Commission President (Article 17(7) TEU). D is the rule for confirming Parliament's budget amendments after the Council rejects a joint text (Article 314(7)(d) TFEU). The vote also cannot take place until at least three days after the motion is tabled, and only by open vote.

Why AI tools get these wrong

Chatbots learn from text written over many years, so they mix up terms: 751 and 705 MEPs, the 2019-2024 priorities, the old article numbers, a proposal reported as if adopted. A Stanford study found that large language models gave false answers between 69% of the time (ChatGPT 3.5) and 88% (Llama 2) when asked specific, verifiable questions about random US federal court cases (Dahl and colleagues, 2024). That study is about US case law, not EU law, but the failure it measures, a confident answer with no source behind it, is the same one.

Our answer to that is the method: every question in our bank is written from a quoted official sentence, re-checked against the live text by a second person, and dated against each competition's cut-off. When we get something wrong, it goes in the public corrections log. How it works is on our method page. For more numbers to learn with their labels, see the numbers of the EU institutions.