If it is a test or a 170A put down whatever is expected.
To be honest, I think this is exactly what Peters question was about.
Peter has been flying on his FAA PPL/IR throughout Europe for a number of years now and he's still around despite having to divert a few times. So I guess from a practical standpoint, he knows all there is to know about selection of alternates. In fact, from a practical point he can teach us all something about selection of alternates.
Now he failed his JAA 170A, and this is apparently one of the reasons. So he wants to get to the bottom of this.
So far the only real references people have posted (other than a few common sense posts - but we have established by now that the JAA IR is not about common sense) seem to come straight from EU-OPS. But EU-OPS doesn't apply to private flights. The question then becomes: Does it (legally speaking) apply to an IR that's going to be attached to a PPL? In other words: Show us the bit in the ANO, LASORS or whatever that specifies that knowledge of, and adherence to, EU-OPS is a requisite for the IR.
Or in yet other words:
Yeah but if you want the rating then you have to jump through the hoops. If that means the conduct of the test is as per a public transport flight then so be it.
So is a selection of a public-transport worthy alternate (as per EU-OPS) one of the hoops to jump through or not?