| Author (Person) | Thomson, Ian |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Chadwyck-Healey Ltd |
| Series Title | European Access |
| Series Details | No.2 April |
| Publication Date | April 1999 |
| ISSN | 0264-7362 |
| Content Type | Overview |
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A concise guide to the printed and electronic legislative and judicial information sources of the European Union. Proposed legislation
Consultation phase
Adopted legislation (Original, amending and accession treaties)
Secondary legislation (Regulations, Directives, Decisions, Recommendations, Opinions, etc.)
Judicial processes
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 Butterworth publishes 'Butterworth's EC Legislation Implementor' which lists UK implementing measures. Selected national implementing measures are available in SCADPLUS service: http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/ Explanatory information on sources listed 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 (Official Journal of the European Communities) 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 euro, 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 print version of 'S' series of the Official Journal of the European Communities has now been discontinued. Information is now available in various electronic formats: TED database, CD-ROM or on the internet: http://ted.eur-op.eu.int. The web version is freely available. In addition to the printed version of the Official Journal of the European Communities a CD-ROM version of the 'L' and 'C' series is available from 1998, while a new hybrid CD-ROM / Internet subscription will be offer from 1999. The microfiche version of the Official Journal of the European Communities will cease at the end of 1999. Also new from 1998 is free access on the Internet to the last forty five days' issues of the 'L' and 'C' parts of the Official Journal of the European Communities (see EUR-Lex below). Each issue of the 'C', 'L' and 'S' series of the Official Journal of the European Communities 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 Official Journal of the European Communities, 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 CD-ROM 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 (Financial Times), 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 Financial Times 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 (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 was 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 forty five 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.htm and click on 'How to order' in the left-hand frame. The contact addresses of the commercial publishers mentioned above are: Context Ltd Financial Times Profile Lexis-Nexis Europe ILI Technical Indexes Lovdata http://www.lovdata.no/clx/info Ellis Publications |
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| Subject Categories | Culture, Education and Research, Politics and International Relations |
| Countries / Regions | Europe |
