Developments in European information issues: Networks and relays – Services – Products, July 2001

Belgian Presidency sites go live

Following the naming convention of the Swedish presidency, the Belgian presidency site has gone live at the URLhttp://www.eu2001.be/. In content and functionality Sweden will be a hard act to follow so there will be high expectations to live up to. Belgium has also launched its R+D information site athttp://www.cordis.lu/belgium/ to report the work of the Belgian presidency of the Research Council. Under its leadership Belgium hopes to resolve negotiations on the 6th Framework Programme.

Court of Justice website developments

Useful additions are being made to the Court of Justice website in the recent case-law section. Two features still under construction are a list of pending cases and a list of cases removed from the register. Already up and running is the option “numerical access to the case-law”. This lists all cases lodged before the Court in numerical order, as in the Court's printed Index A-Z. For the Court of Justice cases, this is in two parts, again as in the printed version, covering 1953-1988 and 1989 to date. The Court of First Instance cases date from 1989 following its more recent establishment. The bonus on the web however is that the case numbers are hyperlinks leading to the full text of the cases free of charge from CELEXplus. The listing makes it simple to identify pending cases, those removed from the register and joined cases. In the example of joined cases, a link to the relevant case is provided. This development should prove a boon to all searching by specific case number and, of course, users will be directed through to the Court site from the new EUR-Lex portal. It is worth noting that rather than scrolling through a lengthy list you can use your browser's Find function - see under Edit on the menu bar, or press Ctrl+F - to search for a number or party name. The presentation of earlier cases may not be all that you would wish as the text is often all in capital letters. There is a reminder on the site too that electronic versions are not the authoritative texts and may differ from the definitive version published in the printed Reports of cases before the Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance. Nevertheless this initiative is a welcome development in providing quick and free access to the entire body of case-law of the Court.

The Debate continues

If you have not visited the site for the Debate on the Future of Europe recently, it is time to have another look at http://europa.eu.int/futurum/index_en.htm. As well as changes to the site, there has been an expansion of the content. From March 2001 this site has replaced Dialogue on Europe. There are links to official texts, documents, details of events at a national and European level, links to national debates in the member states and the candidate countries, contributions of national governments, and viewpoints of a wide range of organisations. In addition there is the opportunity to contribute to the debate through the discussion fora. Feedback on how these are working has not been entirely positive and criticisms have been directed at the speed of the system (or rather lack of it), the translation problem and the difficulty of following contributions by subject. In response the web team is looking at solutions, one of which will be the introduction in the autumn of a subject threads system for the debate. Another solution under consideration to improve the speed of loading is to show only the last ten contributions. Meantime the way round the problem has been to open up a new debate, in effect cutting off the old file though it can still be viewed. This means there are fewer pages to load. The use of a machine translation system has been ruled out but contributors are free to write in the language they choose.