Eur-Lex

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Eur-Lex (stylized EUR-Lex) is an official website of European Union law and other public documents of the European Union (EU), published in 24 official languages of the EU. The Official Journal (OJ) of the European Union is also published on Eur-Lex. Users can access Eur-Lex free of charge and also register for a free account, which offers extra features.

Website set of related web pages served from a single web domain

A website or Web site is a collection of related network web resources, such as web pages, multimedia content, which are typically identified with a common domain name, and published on at least one web server. Notable examples are wikipedia.org, google.com, and amazon.com.

European Union law body of treaties and legislation which have direct effect or indirect effect on the laws of European Union member states

European Union law is the system of laws operating within the member states of the European Union. The EU has political institutions and social and economic policies. According to its Court of Justice, the EU represents "a new legal order of international law". The EU's legal foundations are the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, unanimously agreed by the governments of 28 member states. New states may join the EU, if they agree to operate by the rules of the organisation, and existing members may leave according to their "own constitutional requirements". Citizens are able to vote directly in elections to the Parliament, while their national governments operate on behalf of them in the Council of the European Union and the European Council. The Commission is the executive branch. The Council of the European Union represents member state governments, while the Court of Justice is meant to uphold the rule of law and human rights. As the Court of Justice said, the EU is "not merely an economic union" but is intended to "ensure social progress and seek the constant improvement of the living and working conditions of their peoples".

The languages of the European Union are languages used by people within the member states of the European Union (EU).

Contents

History

Data processing of legal texts at the European Commission started way back in the 1960s, still using punch cards at the time. A system was being developed to capture relationships between documents and analyse them to extract and re-use metadata, [1] but also to make retrieval easier.

Data processing is, generally, "the collection and manipulation of items of data to produce meaningful information." In this sense it can be considered a subset of information processing, "the change (processing) of information in any manner detectable by an observer."

European Commission executive institution of the European Union

The European Commission (EC) is an institution of the European Union, responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the EU treaties and managing the day-to-day business of the EU. Commissioners swear an oath at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg City, pledging to respect the treaties and to be completely independent in carrying out their duties during their mandate. Unlike in the Council of the European Union, where members are directly and indirectly elected, and the European Parliament, where members are directly elected, the Commissioners are proposed by the Council of the European Union, on the basis of suggestions made by the national governments, and then appointed by the European Council after the approval of the European Parliament.

Punched card recording medium

A punched card or punch card is a piece of stiff paper that can be used to contain digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Digital data can be used for data processing applications or, in earlier examples, used to directly control automated machinery.

Through the years, the system and its scope grew as the Commission started collaborating with other institutions of the European Union and as the Union started expanding. It was named CELEX (Communitatis Europae Lex) and soon became a well-used interinstitutional tool.

Enlargement of the European Union the accession process of new countries to the European Union

The European Union (EU) has expanded a number of times throughout its history by way of the accession of new member states to the Union. To join the EU, a state needs to fulfil economic and political conditions called the Copenhagen criteria, which require a stable democratic government that respects the rule of law, and its corresponding freedoms and institutions. According to the Maastricht Treaty, each current member state and the European Parliament must agree to any enlargement. The process of enlargement is sometimes referred to as European integration. This term is also used to refer to the intensification of co-operation between EU member states as national governments allow for the gradual harmonisation of national laws.

While initially used only internally, the system went through various degrees of availability to the public, including offering content under commercial licences via private companies. Finally, in 1997 a web version was launched and named Eur-Lex, hosted by the Publications Office of the European Union.

A license or licence is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something.

A company, abbreviated as co., is a legal entity made up of an association of people, be they natural, legal, or a mixture of both, for carrying on a commercial or industrial enterprise. Company members share a common purpose, and unite to focus their various talents and organize their collectively available skills or resources to achieve specific, declared goals. Companies take various forms, such as:

Publications Office of the European Union

The Publications Office of the European Union is an interinstitutional office that publishes and disseminates the publications of the institutions and other bodies of the European Union.

The Eur-Lex website was opened to the public in 2001, while CELEX still existed as a separate database until the end of 2004. Subsequently steps were undertaken to merge the two services and to make them completely free of charge.

Database organized collection of data

A database is an organized collection of data, generally stored and accessed electronically from a computer system. Where databases are more complex they are often developed using formal design and modeling techniques.

With the accession of new countries to the European Union and advancements in web and data-processing technologies, the system needed to be improved. A new version was launched in 2004. In 2014 the website saw another major overhaul, including a new database called "CELLAR". [2]

"CELLAR" stores in a single place all metadata and digital content managed by the Publications Office in a harmonized and standardized way. [3]

An aligned parallel corpus consisting of 3.9 million Eur-Lex documents in 24 languages, ranging in size from 37 million tokens for Irish to 840 million tokens for English, was produced in 2016 and made available in the Sketch Engine. Unannotated data is provided to researchers under a Creative Commons license. At the time of publication, the authors considered the Eur-Lex Corpus the largest parallel corpus built from European language resources, more suitable for linguistically motivated searches than the Eur-Lex official website. [4] [5]

Content

On Eur-Lex users can access documents in the official EU languages. Language coverage depends on the date of the accession of a country to the EU. All EU law in force on the date of the accession of a new Member State is available in the language of the acceding country as are all documents adopted after this date. Documents repealed or expired before the date of accession are not available in the language of the acceding country.

Only key legislation adopted jointly by the European Parliament and the Council is available in the Irish language, on a transitional basis. [6] [7]

While each document (and each language version) is an individual part of the database, the content is grouped into sectors. There are currently 12 sectors, each represented by a number or a letter: [8]

1 - Treaties 2 – International agreements 3 – Legislation 4 – Complementary legislation
5 – Preparatory acts 6 – Case-law 7 – National implementing measures 8 – References to national case-law concerning EU law
9 – Parliamentary questions 0 – Consolidated legislation C – Other documents published in the Official Journal C series E – EFTA documents

Official Journal of the European Union

In 1998 the Official Journal of the European Union (OJ) started being published online, on Eur-Lex. As of 1 July 2013, the digital version of the Official Journal bears legal value instead of the paper version, which is now printed on demand only. The e-OJ has an advanced electronic signature which guarantees its authenticity, integrity and inalterability. [9]

All the editions of the OJ are available on Eur-Lex, dating back to 1952, when they were available in French, Italian, Dutch and German. They can be easily retrieved via a search or by browsing.

EU law

Eur-Lex contains all EU law (sectors 3 and 4), which can be retrieved by browsing or using the search options. The main types of acts under this heading are EU treaties (sector 1), directives, regulations, decisions as well as consolidated legislation (sector 0), etc. Consolidation is the integration of a basic legal act and all of its successive amendments and corrigenda into one easy-to-read document. Consolidated texts are intended for use as reference and have no legal value. [10]

Acts which require transposition are published with a list of links to information about the national implementing measures (sector 7).

Preparatory acts and legislative procedures

The database contains also documents preceding legal acts, such as legislative proposals, reports, green and white papers, etc. (sector 5). Some proposals never make it past the preparatory stage, but are still available for consultation.

Each legislative procedure is presented in Eur-Lex with a timeline and a list of events and pertaining documents. Procedures can be accessed via the search or from one of the procedure documents.

EU case law

These documents, authored by the Court of Justice of the European Union, form sector 6 and include, inter alia, judgments, orders, rulings and opinions of the Advocates General.

Other documents

Eur-Lex stores also international agreements (sector 2), parliamentary questions (sector 9), EFTA acts, which include also acts by the EFTA Court and by the EFTA Surveillance Authority (sector E); judgments delivered by courts in contracting states and the EU Court of Justice under the Brussels Regime; [11] references to national case law concerning EU law (sector 8) and other public documents.

CELEX number and other identifiers


Celex number

While EU documents are numbered in different ways, each of them is assigned a unique, language independent identifier, a CELEX number.

This identifier is composed of the number of the sector, then 4 digits for the year, then one or two letters for the type of document and finally 2-4 digits for the number of the document. [12] For example, the CELEX number of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive is 32012L0019 (3 is the sector, legislation; 2012 is the year of publication in the OJ; L represents EU directives and 0019 is the number under which the directives was published in the OJ).

ECLI

The European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) was introduced by the Council, which concluded that for "identification of judicial decisions a standard identifier should be used which is recognisable, readable and understandable by both humans and computers". [13] Documents can be retrieved using ECLI also on Eur-Lex.

ELI

Eur-Lex offers also the possibility to retrieve documents by their European Legislation Identifier introduced with Council Conclusions of 10 October 2012 (2012/C 325/02). [14]

Functionalities

Documents can be retrieved via a search engine (IDOL [15] by HP Autonomy) using various search forms. It is possible to search by document references, dates, text and a multitude of metadata. Registered users have the option of using the expert search and performing searches using Boolean operators.

Text display and formats

Texts and their metadata can be retrieved, displayed and downloaded in various formats (html, pdf, xml). For simultaneous work with several language versions, users can use the multilingual display, which is especially useful for translation and linguistics .

Reuse of data

The data is available for reuse via a web service for commercial or non-commercial purposes as long as the source is acknowledged. [16] Certain collections (datasets) of documents found on Eur-Lex can also be found on the European Open Data Portal.

Saved documents and searches

Registered users can save documents and searches in their Eur-Lex account, create search and print profiles, and set their own RSS feeds based on saved searches. [17]

Preferences

Registered users have access to a plethora of settings with which they can customise their experience on the website.

Overview of functionalities
FunctionalityNon-registered usersRegistered users
Simple and advanced searchYESYES
Expert search (Boolean operators, more options)NOYES
Saved documents and searchesNOYES

(stored in the account)

Website, search, export and print preferencesNOYES
RSS feedsYES

(only predefined)

YES

(custom made based on saved searches)

Access to national law of EU member states

N-Lex is a common access point to national law of each country of European Union. It is an interface between users and databases of national legislation.

See also

Related Research Articles

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<i>Official Journal of the European Union</i> public journal

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Comitology process by which European Union law is modified or adjusted

Comitology in the European Union refers to a process by which EU law is modified or adjusted and takes place within "comitology committees" 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. The comitology system was reconfigured by the Lisbon Treaty which introduced the current Articles 290 and 291 TFEU. Whereas Article 291 TFEU provides for a continuation of implementation of EU law through comitology, Article 290 TFEU introduced the delegated act which is now used to amend or supplement EU legislation, whereas beforehand this was also done through comitology.

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The European Union Special Representatives (EUSR) are emissaries of the European Union with specific tasks abroad. While the EU's ambassadors are responsible for affairs with a single country, Special Representatives tackle specific issues, conflict areas or regions of countries. They answer directly to the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, currently Federica Mogherini.

Water supply and sanitation (WSS) in the European Union (EU) is the responsibility of each member state, but in the 21st century union-wide policies have come into effect. Water resources are limited and supply and sanitation systems are under pressure from urbanisation and climate change. Indeed, the stakes are high as the European Environmental Agency found that one European out of ten already suffers a situation of water scarcity and the IEA measured the energy consumption of the water sector to be equivalent to 3,5% of the electricity consumption of the EU.

Council Directive 80/1269/EEC of 16 December 1980 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to the engine power of motor vehicles is a European Union law concerning measurement of engine power in motor vehicles intended for road use with at least four wheels and a maximum speed exceeding 25 km/h. Council Directive 80/1269/EEC is based upon ISO 1585 with some influence of ECE regulation 85. It can essentially be seen as an updated version of DIN 70020, which it has replaced.

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The Payment Services Directive is an EU Directive, administered by the European Commission to regulate payment services and payment service providers throughout the European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA). The Directive's purpose was to increase pan-European competition and participation in the payments industry also from non-banks, and to provide for a level playing field by harmonizing consumer protection and the rights and obligations for payment providers and users.

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Council Implementing Regulation (EU) No. 282/2011

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References

  1. ↑ "25 years of European law online". Publications office of the European Union. Retrieved 23 August 2016.
  2. ↑ "CELLAR, OPEN DATA, LINKED OPEN DATA EU Open Data Portal - presentation" . Retrieved 23 August 2016.
  3. ↑ "Common Access to EU Information based on semantic technology (presentation)" (PDF). Retrieved 19 August 2016.
  4. ↑ Baisa, Vít; Michelfeit, Jan; Medveď, Marek; Jakubíček, Miloš (2016). "European Union Language Resources in Sketch Engine" (PDF). The Proceedings of tenth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC’16). Portorož, Slovenia: European Language Resources Association (ELRA).
  5. ↑ "EUR-Lex Corpus". Sketch Engine. Lexical Computing CZ s.r.o. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  6. ↑ "Council Regulation (EC) No 920/2005" . Retrieved 18 August 2016.
  7. ↑ "Council Regulation (EU) No 1257/2010" . Retrieved 18 August 2016.
  8. ↑ "EUR-Lex - Frequently asked questions" . Retrieved 18 August 2016.
  9. ↑ "About the electronic edition of the Official Journal" . Retrieved 18 August 2016.
  10. ↑ "About consolidation" . Retrieved 19 August 2016.
  11. ↑ "JURE – Jurisdiction, recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters" . Retrieved 18 August 2016.
  12. ↑ "EUR-Lex - Frequently asked questions" . Retrieved 18 August 2016.
  13. ↑ "Council conclusions inviting the introduction of the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) and a minimum set of uniform metadata for case law". 29 April 2011. Retrieved 24 August 2016.
  14. ↑ "Council conclusions inviting the introduction of the European Legislation Identifier (ELI)". 26 October 2012. Retrieved 24 August 2016.
  15. ↑ "Access to legislation in force: a question of democracy. A view from an European Union Region: Catalonia. (presentation)" (PDF). Retrieved 18 August 2016.
  16. ↑ "EUR-Lex - Legal notice" . Retrieved 18 August 2016.
  17. ↑ "EUR-Lex - Help pages" . Retrieved 18 August 2016.
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