EU Documents Portal, October 2003

A new Documents portal has been launched on the Europa website at http://europa.eu.int/documents/index_en.htm. It can also be reached by selecting the link 'European Union documents' from the Europa home page and then choosing 'Overview'. The site aims to identify the different kinds of documents published and provide easy routes to track them down. It is organised in three sections: European law; documents common to all the institutions; and documents of individual institutions. In most cases interposed between the portal page and the actual site is an explanatory page, giving more information about what the link sites offer.

From the law section, links are offered to EUR-Lex and CELEX, the legislative process databases OEIL and PreLex, case law, and summaries of legislation. The section on documents common to all the institutions has direct links to publications such as the Bulletin of the European Union and the General Report on the Activities of the European Union as well as the Historical Archives of the European Union, but more broadly it has a hyperlink to the Publications portal managed by the Publications Office at http://europa.eu.int/publications/index_en.htm. The Publications portal is designed as a reference point for all sites of institutions and agencies which contain either catalogues of publications or access to the publications themselves, whether free of charge or against payment. There is also information about the publishing programme of the services identified. The site can be searched by a thematic index or via an alphabetical list.

The final section of the Documents portal - documents of individual institutions links to the registers of documents but also duplicates some of the information in the Publications portal for the key institutions, giving information about what they publish before linking to the institutions' sites.

For those who know how to navigate Europa, the Documents portal and the Publications portal will only add a number of layers to their search. For others who are less certain of where to find what they are looking for, the portals will offer an organised approach to simplify the process.

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