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EAP takes many different forms and the pandemic has created many different problems for EAP practitioners. It’s unlikely that we shall ever have a comprehensive account of COVID-19’s impact, but anecdotal evidence suggests that most educational sectors have faced two challenges in particular: students’ limited capacity for autonomous learning and the difficulty (in many cases, the impossibility) of moving high-stakes institutional exams online. Those are the two challenges of my title. The one solution I propose rests on the argument that the CEFR’s “can do” descriptors allow us to “constructively align” curriculum, teaching/learning and assessment in a way that supports reflective learning and fosters the development of learner autonomy. There is nothing new about the elements of my argument. I shall advocate an approach to teaching and learning that was already central to the Council of Europe’s adult education project of the 1970s; and the European Language Portfolio was conceived in the 1990s partly as a way of making learners partners in the assessment process. To date, however, the argument has failed to gain widespread traction. I make it again in the hope that it can contribute to post-pandemic reflection on future directions for EAP.