The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is a regional trade organization and free trade area consisting of four European states: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. The organization operates in parallel with the European Union (EU), and all four member states participate in the European Single Market and are part of the Schengen Area. They are not, however, party to the European Union Customs Union.
A directive is a legal act of the European Union that requires member states to achieve particular goals without dictating how the member states achieve those goals. A directive's goals have to be made the goals of one or more new or changed national laws by the member states before this legislation applies to individuals residing in the member states. Directives normally leave member states with a certain amount of leeway as to the exact rules to be adopted. Directives can be adopted by means of a variety of legislative procedures depending on their subject matter.
The Official Journal of the European Union is the official gazette of record for the European Union (EU). It is published every working day in all of the official languages of the member states of the EU. Only legal acts published in the Official Journal are binding.
In European Union law, direct effect is the principle that Union law may, if appropriately framed, confer rights on individuals which the courts of member states of the European Union are bound to recognise and enforce.
Comitology in the European Union refers to a process by which EU law is implemented or adjusted by the European Commission working in conjunction with committees of national representatives from the EU member states, colloquially called "comitology committees". These are chaired by the European Commission. The official term for the process is committee procedure. Comitology committees are part of the EU's broader system of committees that assist in the making, adoption, and implementation of EU laws.
A regulation is a legal act of the European Union which becomes immediately enforceable as law in all member states simultaneously. Regulations can be distinguished from directives which, at least in principle, need to be transposed into national law. Regulations can be adopted by means of a variety of legislative procedures depending on their subject matter.
The Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases is a directive of the European Union in the field of copyright law, made under the internal market provisions of the Treaty of Rome. It harmonises the treatment of databases under copyright law and the sui generis right for the creators of databases which do not qualify for copyright.
The Schengen Area is an area encompassing 27 European countries that have officially abolished border controls at their mutual borders. Being an element within the wider area of freedom, security and justice policy of the European Union (EU), it mostly functions as a single jurisdiction under a common visa policy for international travel purposes. The area is named after the 1985 Schengen Agreement and the 1990 Schengen Convention, both signed in Schengen, Luxembourg.
The European Union's Third Energy Package is a legislative package for an internal gas and electricity market in the European Union. Its purpose is to further open up the gas and electricity markets in the European Union. The package was proposed by the European Commission in September 2007, and adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union in July 2009. It entered into force on 3 September 2009.
Council Implementing Regulation (EU) No. 282/2011 was adopted by the Council of the European Union on 15 March 2011. This was mainly because the terms and wording of Directive 2006/112/EC have been inconclusive in some cases. The Regulation provided new implementing measures for the VAT Directive. Especially due to the amendment of the VAT Directive itself and the consistent case-law of the European Court of Justice, the former Implementing Regulation (EC) No. 1777/2005 had to be recast and clarified in certain aspects. This Implementing Regulation became effective on 1 July 2011 and does not have to be transported into national legislation of the individual member states of the European Union and thus is directly applicable.
Lex is a URN namespace, a type of Uniform Resource Name (URN), that allows accurate identification of laws and other legal norms.
Relations between the Principality of Liechtensteinand the European Union (EU) are shaped heavily by Liechtenstein's participation in the European Economic Area (EEA).
Directive on intra-EU-transfers of defence-related products is a European Union Directive with relevance for the European Economic Area. "Transfer" in this context means "any transmission or movement of a defence-related product from a supplier to a recipient in another Member State".
The European Legislation Identifier (ELI) ontology is a vocabulary for representing metadata about national and European Union (EU) legislation. It is designed to provide a standardized way to identify and describe the context and content of national or EU legislation, including its purpose, scope, relationships with other legislations and legal basis. This will guarantee easier identification, access, exchange and reuse of legislation for public authorities, professional users, academics and citizens. ELI paves the way for knowledge graphs, based on semantic web standards, of legal gazettes and official journals.
The European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) is an identifier for court decisions in Europe. The identifier consists of five elements separated by colons: ECLI:[country code]:[court identifier]:[year of decision]:[specific identifier]. The standard is laid down in the Council Conclusions inviting the introduction of the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) and a minimum set of uniform metadata for case law of the European Union. The ECLI framework also contains a set of uniform metadata to improve search facilities for case law. Court decisions that have an ECLI assigned can be indexed by the ECLI Search Engine of the European e-Justice portal.
Passports of the EFTA member states are passports issued by the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) member states Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. EFTA is in this article used as a common name for these countries.
The Directive on the accessibility of websites and mobile applications also known as Directive (EU) 2016/2102 was adopted by the EU in 2016. This Directive applies to public sector organizations of member states of the European Union. The goal was to ensure that all public sector organizations were accessible for the 80 million people with disabilities in the EU.
European Union 