Rules

1. General

The European Mathematical Cup (abbr. EMC) is held every year in December globally. The EMC is an open competition. Therefore, students from non-European countries may participate in the competition as well, provided they have a local organiser under whom they can participate.

The purpose of the EMC is to prepare high school students for other international competitions and to give them a chance to solve a few, hopefully, nice and challenging problems.

The competition takes place in December, during a 9-day interval which is chosen by the EMC Jury. The competition can be organised on any day of the 9-day interval. The exact date varies by location and is usually chosen to be the most suitable within the given time frame.

The EMC is free and open to all high school students. Any attempt to charge the students for participation in the competition is strongly prohibited and will result in disqualification and a loss of the local organiser status for future editions.

2. Participation

The European Mathematical Cup is organized by the association Young Gifted Mathematicians “Marin Getaldić” from Croatia in coordination with local organizers who are responsible for the competition in their location. Requirements for local organizers are described in Section 3.

Contestants are eligible to participate in the EMC if they are eligible for the following IMO.

The EMC is divided into two categories: Junior and Senior.

  • A student can participate in the Junior category if they are less than 17 years old on the day of writing the contest, and if they haven’t yet participated in the IMO.
  • Any student who is eligible to participate in the EMC can participate in the Senior Category.
  • different criteria for student participation in the Junior category, subject to approval by the Organisational Jury no later than December 1st.

3. Local organizers

Local organisers are the people or organisations organising the EMC in their city or country. Typically, local organisers are university students or mathematics professors.<\p>

The call for local organisers will be published on the official website of the competition at least a month before the deadline for registration. If you are applying to be a local organiser for the first time, you are required to provide background information to confirm your suitability for the role of the local organiser (e.g., previous experience organising international competitions, membership in a relevant association, teaching credentials, or links to an institutional website). Then, you should fill out the form we will send before the deadline. If you miss the deadline, you will not be able to serve as a local organiser.

Their obligations are the following:

  • Before the contest, they should inform all the potential contestants about the competition and its regulations. They should choose where and when the contest will be held and make the necessary arrangements. Their information will also be published on the official webpage so potential contestants can reach them.
  • To organize the contest. We request that all local organisers hold the competition in person, where feasible. If the contest is being held live (usually in a classroom in a local school or university) they distribute the problem sheets to contestants (translated into their language if necessary). If the contest is not being held live, the contest should be held via a video call; all of the contestants must be on the same call as the local organiser and their desks should be clearly visible (local organisers can ask that it is recorded with multiple cameras and we strongly advise; e.g. both using your laptop webcam and your phone to record your laptop screen). The organisers should send the (translated, if necessary) problems to the contestants via e-mail a few minutes before the competition starts. The contestants should then print the problems. If they do not have a printer, they should copy the problems on a piece of paper. The use of any communication devices (e.g., phones, laptops, smartwatches) during the competition is strictly prohibited and will result in immediate disqualification. If the contest cannot be held either live or via a video call, the local organiser must contact us and suggest an alternative way to hold the competition. We expect local organisers to ensure contestants adhere to the rules.
  • After the contest, the local organisers should collect contestants’ solutions or scans and send them to the EMC Jury. We ask them to attach the translations of those parts of the contestants’ work they consider might be worth marks. The translations should be in English and Latin script; all parts of students’ work which are not translated in this fashion will not be marked.
  • For local organisers and any help they bring to ensure marking can be done in a timely manner, we will provide detailed marking schemes of all solutions known to the Central Jury. Marking schemes will be sent as soon as possible after the last day of the competition. We expect to receive scans of locally marked scripts, along with the completed marking and translations of any sections where points were awarded no later than the date determined by Organisational Jury, which will be sent to local organisers along with the marking schemes, that will be at least 14 days after they receive the marking schemes. We ask that all parts of the students’ work which were awarded marks are translated, so the Central Jury can ensure the uniformity of the marking.

Additionally, we invite local organisers to help us by proposing problems. We intend that all of the problems at the EMC are original (not already seen on the Internet or some other competition), so we invite local organisers to send us problem proposals. The problems not selected for the competition are kept confidential forever. It is allowed to propose problems which are not entirely original, but in such cases, we require the full background of such a problem, including whether it has appeared in another competition.

Additionally, we also invite local organisers to participate in the selection process or central grading of the problems to ensure the whole process runs smoothly and fast.

4. Contest regulations

The contest regulations closely follow those of the IMO.

Contestants may receive the problems in one or two languages, as determined by the local organisers.

Each contestant must work independently and submit their solutions either in their native language or in English, as specified by the local organisers. The duration of the competition for both categories is 4 hours. The contest consists of 4 problems. Each problem is worth 10 points. We ask contestants to write only on one side of a plain A4 paper. It is not allowed to write attempts at different problems on the same sheet. Each paper should contain the student’s name, location, category and the number of the problem. If the contestant used more than one page per problem, the pages should be enumerated.

Only writing and drawing instruments, such as rulers and compasses, are permitted during the contest. Specifically, the use of books (with the exception of dictionaries for those writing in English), papers containing formulas, cheat sheets, tables, calculators, protractors, computers, or any communication devices is strictly prohibited.

Local organisers must ensure that no contestant has access to any direct or indirect information regarding the proposed problems. They must also ensure that all contest problems and solutions are kept strictly confidential until after the entire contest has finished.

5. Coordination

For each problem, a contestant will receive an integer score out of a maximum of ten points.

Local grading will be reviewed by the Central Jury to ensure consistency and uniformity. The Central Jury will review the scripts of participants who scored the highest, as well as a random selection of others; however, not all scripts will be reviewed by default. Should the Central Jury identify minor discrepancies in the reviewed sample, the local scores will be adjusted accordingly.

In cases where significant discrepancies are identified between local grading and the Central Jury’s evaluation, the Central Jury may re-examine all or most scripts. The local organiser responsible for those participants will lose the right to host the competition for at least one edition.

If the Central Jury determines that any part of the requested materials (e.g., translated scans on Google Drive or local marking scores in the Google Sheets spreadsheet) is missing after the deadline, the corresponding scores will be automatically set to 0. Only the official marking spreadsheet will be accepted for submitting scores.

If a significant portion of the required materials is missing, the local organiser will lose the right to host the competition for at least one edition, and all missing components will receive 0 points.

Scripts marked with 0 points due to missing translations or incomplete marking in the official spreadsheet will remain at 0 points for the temporary results. If the issue is easily resolvable (e.g., a local organiser omitted to upload a few scripts or a single problem), an appeal can be submitted even before receiving temporary results once they fixed the issue.

6. Temporary results and appeals

As soon as possible after the contest, once the Central Jury has ensured the marking is consistent with the rest of the results, local organisers will receive temporary results. Upon announcement of these results, a contestant may submit an appeal through their local organiser. If the local organiser agrees with the contestant’s objection, they may forward the appeal to the EMC Jury no later than the deadline provided along with the preliminary results, which will be at least 7 days after receiving temporary results. The EMC Jury will then reassess the contestant’s solution and may contact the local organiser or contestant for further clarification if needed.

Once the objection review process is concluded, the preliminary results become final. These results will be published on the official EMC website and sent to local organisers as soon as all appeals have been reviewed.

7. Prizes, medals and certificates

Some contestants are awarded prizes and medals based on the following criteria. We say a contestant is a candidate if there are no more than 5 students from the same country and category with more points. Then, for each category separately, we form a list with 6 of the best candidates from each country (we will call this a cut-list). We then set the prize cut-offs so that approximately half of the candidates from the cut-list win a prize, and the numbers of first, second and third prizes are approximately in the ratio 1:2:3. The top-performing participants are awarded medals and other prizes.

Contestants who do not qualify as candidates but rank among the top 20 in their country will appear on the Official Results list and receive any prize they are eligible for. At the discretion of the Organisational Jury, partial results may be published, excluding participants who scored below a certain threshold. Every contestant may request a certificate of participation or any awards they have earned directly from us, although certificates will be automatically generated and sent to local organisers as soon as possible following the release of final results.

A country’s score is defined, for each category separately, as the sum of scores of candidates from the cut-list. This score is used to form country results and to award the title of “European Champion”.