Legislative and judicial information sources of the European Union

Author (Person)
Publisher
Series Title
Series Details No.3 June
Publication Date June 1998
ISSN 0264-7362
Content Type

Proposed legislation:

  • Pre-legislative consultation documents (Green/White Papers): COM Document/CELEX Sector 5 (B/FT)/EUROPA (selection) / EUR-Lex
  • Draft legislative stage within Commission. Not formally published and not officially available
  • Formal legislative proposal (+ subsequent amended or modified legislative proposals): Official Journal C series (legislative proposal) / COM Document (explanatory memorandum + legislative proposal)/ CELEX Sector 5(B/FT) / EUR-Lex

Consultation phase:

  • Consultation within European Parliament (EP): Committee Report of the EP: European Parliament Session Document Series A. Committee Reports of the European Parliament Reports (microfiche only); Resolution of the EP: Official Journal C / CELEX Sector 5(B/FT); Written questions: Official Journal C series / CELEX Sector 9(B/FT); Debates of the EP: Official Journal: Annex. Most information now on EP homepage: http://www.europarl.eu.int/. See also EPOQUE.
  • Consultation within Economic and Social Committee (Economic and Social Committee): Opinion of the Economic and Social Committee: Official Journal C series / CES Reports / CELEX Sector 5(B/FT). Economic and Social Committee homepage: http://www.esc.eu.int/en/default.htm
  • Consultation within Committee of the Regions (CoR): Opinion of the CoR: Official Journal C series / CdF Reports / CELEX Sector 5(B/FT). CoR homepage: http://www.cor.eu.int
  • Common Position of the Council:Official Journal C series / CELEX Sector 5(B/FT)
  • Conciliation Committee: http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg2/conciliation/en/default.htm(background information from EP perspective).

Adopted legislation:

Primary legislation (Original, amending and accession treaties)

Secondary legislation (Regulations, Directives, Decisions,
Recommendations, Opinions, etc.)

  • Official Journal L series / CELEX Sectors 3(standard) and 4 (Non-standard, including CFSP and JHA)(FT) / EUR-Lex

Judicial processes:

  • Cases brought to Court of Justice (ECJ) and Court of First Instance (CFI):Official Journal C series. Diary of forthcoming cases on Internet: http://www.curia.eu.int
  • Judgments of the ECJ and CFI and Opinions of the Advocates General: Report of Cases before the Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance (Parts I and II); European Court Reports (staff cases) / CELEX Sector 6(FT). Brief essence of judgment is also published in Official Journal C series. Text of judgments on ECJ homepage from June1997: http://www.curia.eu.int (After one year judgments will be removed as printed version will be available) / EUR-Lex

Secondary sources:

National implementing measures:

EU does not publish in hard copy details of national measures implementing Directives. Information is in CELEX Sector 7(B). In the UK, Butterworths publish 'Butterworths EC Legislation Implementor' which lists UK implementing measures. Selected national implementing measures are available in the new SCADPLUS service: http://europa.eu.int/comm/sg/scadplus/. Note that from 1997, the full text of UK Statutory Instruments and Acts of Parliament, including those which implement EC Directives, are freely available on the Internet. (http://www.hmso.gov.uk/)

Explanatory information on sources cited above:

Official Journal of the European Communities

The printed Official Journal of the European Communities is traditionally seen as the formal source of legislative information in the European Community/European Union. It is published daily in each of the official languages of the EU. The Official Journal (OJ) is published in a number of separate parts:

- L series: ('L' standing for 'Legislation') contains the text of the adopted legislation of the EU.

- C series: ('C' standing for 'Communication', usually called the 'Information and Notices' series in English) contains a mass of different types of legislative and other information. Legislative information includes: formal text of legislative proposals from the European Commission (including initial, amended and modified proposals); formal minutes of the plenary sessions of the European Parliament, including the text of Resolutions of the European Parliament and written questions; the Opinions of the Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions and the ECSC Consultative Committee; the text of the Common Position reached by the Council. Judicial information includes brief information on cases brought to, and judgments of, the European Court of Justice and Court of First Instance, and judgments of the Courts. Other important information in the 'C' series includes reports of the European Court of Auditors, the daily rate of national currencies against the ECU, notices of competitions for employment in the EU Institutions and miscellaneous Communications.

- Annex: contains the full text of the debates held during the plenary sessions of the European Parliament, plus the text of verbal questions and answers.

- S series ('S' standing for 'Supplement') contains public tenders associated with the EU's public procurement legislation. The 'S' series of the OJ will be discontinued from mid-1998. Information will in the future only be available from electronic sources (TED database, on-line or the Internet, and in a CD-ROM format).

In addition to the printed version of the OJ, a quarterly CD-ROM version of the 'L' and 'C' series is available from 1998. A microfiche version is also available. Also new from 1998 is free access on the Internet to the last twenty days' issues of the 'L' and 'C' parts of the OJ (see EUR-Lex below).

Each issue of the 'C', 'L' and 'S' series of the OJ is numbered sequentially beginning at No.1 at the beginning of each calendar year. The Annex is numbered in a continuous running sequence.

COM Documents

COM Documents are an important series of working documents of the European Commission. Currently, about 600-700 COM Documents are published each year.

They can be divided into three types of document:

- The text of legislative proposals from the European Commission. While this information is also published in the 'C' series of the OJ, in the COM Document there is also a useful 'Explanatory Memorandum'.

- Communications: pre-legislative consultative document outlining early Commission thinking on a subject and often seeking a response from interested bodies. Often now called 'Green' or 'White' Papers.

- Reports analysing or evaluating the implementation of existing EU policies.

COM Documents can be obtained in paper or microfiche on subscription. Individual COM Documents can be obtained from sales agents of the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities (EUR-OP). Some COM Documents are now available in the commercial CDROM versions of CELEX (see below) and can also be increasingly be found on the Internet in EUROPA (see below).

COM Documents are numbered sequentially beginning at No.1 at the beginning of each calendar year.

CELEX

CELEX is the name of the EU's legislative database divided into nine 'sectors' (categories of information). Currently some sectors are full-text (FT), while others are only bibliographical (B). It is the intention to make all sectors full-text in the future and to add further information. Obtainable on-line from EU host Eurobases or from national gateways, certain sectors are also available from commercial hosts such as LEXIS and FT Profile. In addition CELEX is available in user-friendly CD-ROM format, with various and increasing enhancements, from commercial companies such as Ellis Publications, Context, ILI and Technical Indexes. An Internet version is available from Norwegian organisation LOVDATA (in English) and an EU web based version is available (http://europa.eu.int/celex/htm/celex_en.htm) (Eurobases password/userword required). Publishers of CD-ROM versions are increasingly also offering Internet versions.

EUROPA

EUROPA is the EU's main gateway server on the Internet (Address: http://europa.eu.int). The amount of substantive information on EUROPA from all the EU Institutions is increasing very quickly. It is possible to gain access to the homepages of all EU Institutions (and departments within Institutions) by accessing EUROPA. In addition, self-contained databases such as CELEX, SCAD, ECLAS and RAPID, can also be accessed through EUROPA.

EUR-Lex

From mid-1998 a new service called EUR-Lex has been launched by the EU on the Internet, which comprises free access to a mass of legislative and judicial information, such as the full text of the treaties, proposed and adopted legislation and case-law of the ECJ. In addition, the full text of the issues for the last twenty days of the 'C' and 'L' series of the Official Journal is available on EUR-Lex. See http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/

Further details:

EU printed and electronic sources are available from the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities (EUR-OP). EUR-OP maintains a series of sales agents and national gateways in the Member States and elsewhere: these should be contacted for further details of all products. For details of these, see EUR-OP's homepage on the Internet: http://eur-op.eu.int/indexen.htmand click on 'How to order' in the left-hand frame.

The contact addresses of the commercial publishers mentioned above are:

Ellis Publications
PO Box 1059
6201 BB Maastricht
The Netherlands
Tel: +31-(0)43-321-5313
Fax: +31-(0)43-325-3959

Context Ltd
Grand Union House
20 Kentish Town Road
London NW1 9NR
United Kingdom
Tel: +44-(0)171-267-8989
Fax: +44-(0)171-267-1133

FT Profile
Fitzroy House
13-17 Epworth Street
London EC2A 4DL United Kingdom
Tel: +44-(0)171-825-8000
Fax: +44-(0)171-251-2725

Lexis-Nexis Europe
International House
1 St Katharine's Way
London E1 9UN
United Kingdom
Tel: +44-(0)171-464-1300
Fax: +44-(0)171-464-1370

ILI
Index House
Ascot
Berkshire SL5 7EU
United Kingdom
Tel: +44-(0)1344-874343
Fax: +44-(0)1344-291194

Technical Indexes
Willoughby Road
Bracknell
Reading RG12 8DW
United Kingdom
Tel: +44-(0)1344-426311
Fax: +44-(0)1344-424791

Lovdata
Raadhusgaten 7b
N-0151
Oslo
Norway
Fax: +47-22418180

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