New on Europa, October 2004

Regular users of Europa will have noticed that it has a new splash page at http://europa.eu.int, designed in the latest Europa style and giving access to the twenty official language versions. At a lower level there is the new site 'Key facts and figures on the EU' which gives information on - amongst others - the population, standard of living, work, trade, transport, environment and the new member states. The site includes graphs and charts, but the details are very basic and overall it is high on graphics and low on hard facts. Its audience is the younger or more general browser, rather than the specialist.

New on the Activities page is a useful site on institutional affairs at http://europa.eu.int/pol/inst/index_en.htm. This is an excellent entry point to information about the key institutions, their rules of procedure, proposed reforms and the process leading to the new Constitutional Treaty. It also gives access to the treaties and other legislative texts, and sources monitoring the decision-making process such as Pre-Lex and the various documents registers.

A new site which could usefully be linked to from the institutional affairs page is 'Towards a European Constitution', which - consulted on 25th October 2004 - already proclaims that the Constitution was signed in Rome on 29th October 2004. A calendar offers a chronology of the key events leading from the Intergovernmental Conference of 2000 to the signature of the finally agreed text. Links are gathered here to the key sites on the Treaty of Nice, Outcome of the Convention, Work of the IGC 2003/2004 and A Constitution for Europe. Factsheets outline the work of the IGC 2003/2004 and lead to the official documents adopted during the process of negotiations. The site can be accessed at http://europa.eu.int/roadtoconstitution/index_en.htm.