Lawmaking procedures

In this section, you can find information about procedures which lead to the adoption of legal acts by the European institutions. EUR-Lex gives you access to the procedure stages and to related documents. Additional information is also provided, such as the status of the procedure (ongoing, completed, stopped), type of procedure (e.g. ordinary legislative procedure, non-legislative procedure, etc.), legal basis, etc.

Most of these procedures are interinstitutional, i.e. they involve at least two EU institutions.

EUR-Lex gives also access to a number of procedures that are internal to some European institutions/bodies.

How to search in this section

The left-hand side of this page gives access to several search tools:

Search in lawmaking procedures redirects to an advanced search form that offers many options, such as searching by the procedure’s interinstitutional reference, type of procedure, a specific event in the procedure or the procedure’s status. Searches will be performed only within the remit of the “Lawmaking procedures” section.
The Recently published search gives access to all the procedures published in this section in the last 14 days.

You can also find a lawmaking procedure linked to a document by clicking the ‘Procedure’ tab on the left-hand side of the related document page.

To follow the progress of a lawmaking procedure, create an alert (a RSS feed) by clicking 'Follow this procedure' on the left-hand side of a document page. You will be notified every time there is a new event for that particular procedure.

EU lawmaking procedures set out the stages leading to the adoption of legal acts, as well as the institutions and bodies involved and their respective roles. They vary according to the policy area and type of act concerned.

The legislative procedure refers to the process by which the ‘co-legislators’ (European Parliament and the EU Council) adopt legal acts: regulations, directives and decisions. Legal acts of the European Union adopted through the legislative procedure are legislative acts.

The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) makes provision for two types of legislative procedures:

ordinary legislative procedure;
special legislative procedures.

Ordinary legislative procedure

Since the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, the ordinary legislative procedure is the main legislative procedure for EU decision-making, where the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union act jointly as ‘co-legislators’. Before that, it was commonly known as the 'codecision procedure'.

Special legislative procedures

This applies to specific cases set out in the Treaty. Unlike the ordinary legislative procedure, there is no single process for adopting acts under these procedures. A legal act can be adopted under a special legislative procedure by:

the European Parliament with the participation of the Council;
the Council with the participation of the European Parliament.

Non-legislative procedures

EU institutions can also adopt non-legislative acts.

The lawmaking procedures section on EUR-Lex includes interinstitutional non-legislative procedures for acts adopted mostly by the Council on a proposal from the Commission.

Procedures for legal acts adopted by the Commission only (autonomous acts), including Commission implementing and delegated acts, can be found in the internal procedures section.

Abbreviations for the main interinstitutional procedures

The interinstitutional reference for lawmaking procedures is composed of the year, the procedure number (digits and/or letters) and abbreviation of the procedure type.

Example

2012/0011/COD – this corresponds to (year)/ (procedure number)/ (procedure type).

The procedure type 'COD' covers the ordinary legislative procedure (as well as the former co-decision procedure).

Abbreviation	Interinstitutional procedure	Status
ACC	Agreement	Obsolete
APP	Special legislative procedure (European Parliament consent required)	Current
AVC	Assent procedure	Obsolete
BUD	Budgetary procedure	Current
CNB	Consultation of the European Central Bank	Obsolete
CNC	Consultation of the Court of Auditors	Obsolete
CNS	Special legislative procedure (European Parliament consulted)	Current
COD	Ordinary legislative procedure (formerly co-decision procedure)	Current
DEC	Budgetary discharge procedure	Current
NLE	Non-legislative procedure	Current
PRT	Social protocol	Obsolete
SYN	Cooperation procedure	Obsolete

EUR-Lex gives access to information on a number of procedures that are internal to European institutions/bodies.

An internal procedure is a series of stages in the internal decision-making process in an institution or a body. The procedure stages differ depending on the type of procedure, the institution involved and its rules of procedure.

The outcome of an internal procedure can be an act adopted by one institution only (e.g. a Commission autonomous act in the form of implementing act) or a document that is part of an interinstitutional lawmaking procedure (e.g. a Commission proposal or an opinion of European Economic and Social Committee (EESC)).

Information on internal procedures has only been uploaded to EUR-Lex since July 2016 and currently it is available only with regard to the EESC. For instance, you can find the internal procedures that lead to the adoption of Commission’s proposals or delegated/implementing acts, EESC’s opinions, etc.

How to access internal procedures

You can access internal procedures by clicking the corresponding tab on the left-hand side menu of any relevant document page.

See an example of an internal procedure leading to the adoption of a Commission implementing directive.