Developments in European information issues: Networks and relays – Services – Products, June 1999

EUR-Lex expands coverage

EUR-Lex has mounted preparatory documents as a prototype test site from the end of April. It is organised, like the legislation section, according to the analytical structure of the Directory of Community Legislation in Force in twenty thematic chapters with further sub-sections and brings up the full text of proposals and amended proposals. It contains pending proposals only, not those completed or withdrawn. The future plan is to make available the documents produced by the various EC institutions in the legislative and decision-making process such as the opinions of the Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions and the European Parliament but currently only COM documents which are legislative proposals are included. There is no intention, however, to include Commission documents such as programme documents, reports and communications, including Green and White Papers. Key documents in the latter category will from time to time appear on the appropriate DG site, but the document delivery service EUDOR would be the comprehensive access route. Links are offered between the preparatory documents section and the legislation in force section, and vice versa. In using the analytical structure it is not always simple to decide which limb of the tree to climb out on. Use the arrow keys to navigate around or return to the top level. Alternatively use the alphabetical subject index.

As with the legislation in force section of EUR-Lex, the preparatory documents section is to be updated monthly from a CELEX extract. The format is currently plain text only as extracted from the CELEX database, without graphics or tables. PDF and possibly TIFF formats are to be available in the future to offer page facsimiles, but for the time being EUDOR is again the electronic source of the complete document in formatted text. A chronological index is to be introduced later to list the most recent Commission proposals not yet included in the Directory of Community Legislation in Force. To see the latest developments go to http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/