Your Europe Portal, April 2005

Developing the interactive content on Europa and providing a step towards e-Government, the new Your Europe Portal was launched in early March. The site at http://europa.eu.int/youreurope/index_en.html has a direct link from Europa's home page so is highly visible. It draws together under one banner the information that was previously made available on the Dialogue with Business and Dialogue with Citizens sites but offers new functionality as well. The portal is designed to make available detailed, practical information for the individual and for business about rights and opportunities across the EU. It includes information about living, working, studying and travelling in EU member states; about the administrative requirements for businesses, trade regulations, funding sources, public procurement opportunities; and contact details for further information.

Within the Citizens' section, there are general EU-wide guides as well as more specific fact sheets, both at EU and at national level. Selections can be made using the drop down menus, specifying the language required and clicking on “Show information”. The guides and fact sheets are displayed in html, and there is a print or e-mail option to save the information. There is however no PDF option. Here you can find information on social security benefits and pension rights, driving licence recognition, enforcing your rights, equal opportunities, cross-border credit transfers and more. Much of the information is very detailed, but for more help there is also a “useful address” section on the left of the screen which directs users to specific bodies in the member states. The is also a link to Services for Citizens which includes the Citizens Signpost Service, Europe Direct, SOLVIT and the European Ombudsman.

The Business section of the site works in a similar way with the main options on the menu being EU -wide information or information at a national level. Guides covers topics such as employment, regulation, market information, and procurement amongst others. The links offered in this case go to the Business Support Network, SOLVIT, Your Voice in Europe, and Europe Direct.

Available from the top menu bar are useful EU-wide and country links as well as a site map for each of the two sections. The site maps give helpful overviews and may offer a quicker route to the information required, rather than going step by step through the menus. The site also offers a search feature - either using the very basic search template or the advanced one, which allows the search to be restricted to either the business or citizens' section of the site and to EU-level or specific country information. Searches can be limited to the site or widened to take in the whole Europa site. This search appears to use the Europa search engine and - perhaps not surprisingly therefore - the results were unhelpful despite the information being available on the site, so this is not a route that can be recommended.

Overall the site contains a wealth of information with some 1300 guides and fact sheets currently available. Navigation is possible in all the official languages though the content language range may be more restricted. The information is provided by the EU institutions for the EU-level material and by the member states for the country level content. In some cases there may be gaps where countries have not supplied the relevant data. The main aim for the moment is to ensure that the information is complete for all areas, but already a second generation of the portal is planned for 2006.