Developments in European information issues: Networks and relays – Services – Products, June 2003

Glossary of the EU

Europa's glossary of the EU has been enlarged and updated. It now includes 225 definitions of terms ranging for example from accession criteria through concentric circles and Eurocorps to Schengen and variable geometry. To check its coverage visit http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/glossary/index_en.htm.

Construction Industry Safety Campaign

The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EASHW) has a new web site for the SLIC European Construction Safety Campaign due to be launched in June 2003. The Senior Labour Inspectors Committee (SLIC) enables collaboration and co-operation between DG Employment and Social Affairs and experts from member states to enforce Community employment legislation. The current campaign has been prompted by the high number of accidents at work in the construction industry. The web site at http://europe.osha.eu.int/good_practice/sector/construction/slic contains information about the campaign, fact sheets, discussion of the key issues and advice on preventing accidents.

For detailed statistics a link (http://europe.osha.eu.int/statistics) from the menu bar on the left leads to a number of occupational safety and health surveys, selected Eurostat publications and the EASHW's HASTE database. The HASTE database contains outline records describing health and safety monitoring systems for all the current member states plus the Czech Republic and Norway. The database is hosted at http://www.occuphealth.fi/e/eu/haste by the Finnish Institute for Occupational Health and comprises data gathered by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions for a 1995 report.

No Longer in the Pink

Council document 9332/03 of 19 May 2003, accessible through the Council's Register of documents at http://register.consilium.eu.int/utfregister/frames/introfsEN.htm flags up proposed changes to be implemented to the Official Journal from 1st May 2004. With enlargement and the resulting increase in the number of official languages, the need to contain the printing costs of the Official Journal has become imperative. New publishing techniques however mean that a move to digital printing is now possible, enabling decentralised printing with expected savings in circulation costs. Colour printing is ruled out because of the expense, so the most obvious visual change will be the disappearance of the colour border which currently distinguishes the different language versions. This will affect both the paper and electronic issues. ISO codes will be used instead to identify the various languages. One bonus is that this decision will resolve the knotty problem of finding a sufficient number of distinctive colours for ten new member states.

CELEX free?

The European Parliament recommended in Point 21 of its Resolution A5-0440/2002 of 19 December 2002 that the CELEX database be made free of charge. This has been suggested in the light of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 on public access to documents. The Commission has been asked to consider how not just CELEX but also the other databases which monitor the legislative process could be restructured to allow faster and more consistent updating of documents included in the institutions registers. The Parliament has asked the Commission to come forward with a proposal by 1st June 2003 to streamline the system and avoid duplication. In principle the Office for Official Publications is in favour of free access to CELEX from 2004 but in order to overcome the shortfall in income which would result from the move, it has asked for a substantial increase in the CELEX budget so that development work on CELEX can continue. While free access to CELEX will no doubt be welcomed by users, it will put increasing pressure on commercial suppliers and official gateways.

COM documents CD-ROM

Texts of COM documents have for some time now been published in the Official Journal CE and from October 2002 the explanatory memoranda have also been included. However the Commission has decided that from 2003, COM documents will no longer be published in this way. They will continue to be published on EUR-Lex, but this move follows hot on the heels of the decision to cut microfiche production too and to cancel the provision of the print version to official information relays. One positive result from the changes is that greater control is to be exercised over the procedures for receiving the documents from the Secretariat-General and archiving them to ensure availability.

The removal of the COM documents texts from the OJ CE significantly reduces the content of the monthly OJ L & C CD-ROM. It has been decided that a multilingual CD-ROM of COM documents adopted in that month will be published as an annex to the OJ L & C series CD-ROMs. An annual single language version will also be produced to include all COM documents adopted in the course of the year.