There are two possibilities while the various document formats (PDF, html, TIFF, MS WORD, etc.) are still being uploaded to EUR-Lex:

• click on the second option entitled ‘Bibliographic notice + text (bilingual display)’ to go straight to the text.
• select the ‘Bibliographic notice’ option, then on the following screen check ‘Text’ and click on ‘Go’ to display the text. The text will appear at the bottom of the screen, so it is important to scroll down.

Both options lead you to a screen offering the choice of displaying the document simultaneously in two languages. This feature corresponds to the double visualisation html which you may have known in CELEX.

EUR-Lex holds documents in several formats: doc, html, PDF, TIFF.

PDFs and TIFFs allow for the presentation of images, tables and graphics.

For technical reasons, information in the form of images, tables or graphics is not included in html documents. From 1998, the Official Journal of the European Union and COM documents are also available in PDF, which include the complete text.

EUR-Lex contains the legal texts of the EU institutions published in the Official Journal of the European Union and the European Court Reports as well as certain collections of documents disseminated by the institutions.

Certain old texts published in the Official Journal are not in EUR-Lex.

1.4. Where can I find or order EU publications other than the Official Journal?

EU bookshop is an online bookshop giving access to publications from the EU institutions, agencies and other bodies. In addition to the online bookshop, this service will offer an online catalogue and archive of all EU publications. EU bookshop will allow users to search for EU publications, download PDF versions and order paper copies, if available.

You can take out an annual subscription (700–800 issues) or order individual copies. If you start a subscription during the course of a calendar year, you can either pay pro rata for the remaining months of the annual subscription or receive all back issues on CD-ROM at a supplementary cost.

Access to the consolidated legislation is either:

• via the ‘Simple search’ page. Simply select ‘consolidated text’ under the ‘search by document number’;
• via the Directory of Community legislation in force . Simply choose the ‘Legislation in force’ menu, then ‘Directory of Community legislation’ and select the area that you are interested in. If the original act has been consolidated, a link to the consolidated version is displayed. If the act has been the object of several amendments, the various consolidated versions are also available;
• direct access to the consolidated texts is also possible by using the CELEX number: in the ‘Simple search’ page choose ‘search by CELEX number’, type 0 (zero) + year (4 digits) + R (for regulation), L (for directive) or D (for decision), followed by the number of the act (4 digits).

For example, to obtain the consolidated version of Regulation No 1 of the Council of 1958, enter 01958R0001.

Access to the COM documents by chronological lists is not yet fully available.

If you cannot find a specific document:

• select the 'Preparatory acts' menu, then 'COM documents' and use the 'Direct access to documents' search box;
• or use 'Simple search' (search by natural number).

1.8. I am looking for the documents of public interest previously available on EUR-Lex. Where can I find them?

Documents of public interest are documents in which the European Commission expresses its point of view on a question of general interest for the European Community. These documents are published as COM documents. There are two ways of accessing them from the home page:

• select the 'Preparatory acts' collection, then click on 'COM documents';
• select 'Simple search', then 'Preparatory acts' category and limit your search to 'Commission communications'.

We plan to offer a specific 'Documents of public interest' collection in the future.

1.9. I am looking for a recent document, but I cannot find it on EUR-Lex. How often is the database updated?

EUR-Lex is updated daily.

The Official Journal is uploaded in PDF early the same morning as its publication on paper.

Contents are then processed for their individual inclusion in the database which involves detailed legal and bibliographic analysis. Even though individual documents can be loaded the very same day of publication accompanied with a limited number of analytical data (title and publication reference), the complete set of analytical data is loaded within three working days. This explains why there is a short time lapse between the appearance of the Official Journal itself and the subsequent availability of the individual acts for searching.

The frequency of updates of other documents varies due to their being provided by different sources.

1.10. What is a permanent link and how do I use it?

The permanent link allows users to bookmark the address of a bibliographic notice of a document for future quick access. The address you see in the address bar of your browser is dynamic and should not be bookmarked.

There are two simple ways to create a permanent link:

• 1. You can position the mouse cursor on ‘Permanent link’, then right-click and select 'Add to favourites' or a corresponding action; or
• 2. You can click on ‘Permanent link’ and bookmark the following page.

The bookmark name appears by default, but you can change it according to your needs.

2.1. What documents can be found in EUR-Lex?

The database covers texts published in the Official Journal of the European Union L (Legislation) and C (Information and notices), including legislation, international agreements, preparatory acts and parliamentary questions.

Under case-law you can find the judgments of the European Court of Justice and of the Court of First Instance, as well as the opinions of the Advocates-General, as published in the European Court Reports and as provisional texts disseminated earlier by the Court of Justice. Also available are the Commission documents (the COM series and a selection of the SEC series), the collection of consolidated legislative texts and the texts of the Treaties of the European Communities and later the European Union.

2.2. How many documents are there in EUR-Lex?

The database covers documents from the very beginning of the European cooperation, from the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 and the European Economic Community and Euratom in 1957 onwards. It includes some 455800 references in several languages, 3650000 texts in total. An average of 15000 documents are added each year.

The linguistic coverage is greater for the four official languages of the founding Member States, that is Dutch, French, German and Italian. For the other languages you will find translations of the legislation in force at the time of the accession of the country in question and the texts adopted after this date. Some of the texts, particularly the oldest, are therefore not available in the languages that were added during the later accessions: English and Danish; Greek; Spanish and Portuguese; Finnish and Swedish; Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Slovak and Slovene; and more recently Bulgarian and Romanian. See also 3.2.

From the 1 January 2007 Irish (GA) is one of the 23 official languages of the European Union. For practical reasons and on a transitional basis, the institutions of the European Union are not bound by the obligation to draft, translate and publish all acts, including judgments of the Court of Justice, in the Irish language. However, this does not apply to Regulations adopted jointly by the European Parliament and the Council. The operation of this provision will be reviewed on a regular basis, to determine whether it is still needed.

The Constitution and certain Treaties have also been published in Irish. These texts are available on the website in the 'Treaties' collection.

See also 3.2.

Bulgaria and Romania (enlargement 2007)

The websitesite offers access to:

The database is managed by the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities which acts in the name of all the institutions. The institutions participate regularly in the developments of the database through different committees and working parties. A working party of the Council, to which also delegates of the Member States take part, is regularly informed about the management and the developments of the database.

The Advanced search service has been available since August 2006.

Consolidation proceeds according to the dates of entry into force (start date) of the amendments. Regulation 2003/2286 has 5 different dates for entry into force. Each part is consolidated shortly before it enters into force.

The date which indicates the consolidated version is not the date of consolidation but the latest entry into force date of the last modifier. Consolidation follows the start date and not the date of publication.

In this case there is no mistake in consolidation since the text (both on pages 11 and 36) corresponds to the text published in the Official Journal. A corrigendum for the DE version of this Decision should be published first in the Official Journal and then a new consolidated version will be produced.

The mentioned directive has never been published in Finnish in the Official Journal. For this reason it cannot be consolidated and made available in EUR-Lex.

There are no consolidated versions available for the acts of sector 2 as only the general secondary legislation of sector 3 is consolidated. The available link is wrong and will be deleted.

Consolidation is not done if a minor corrigendum is published in a few of the official languages. It will be included in consolidation with the next modifier.

There are various reasons for non-availability of a consolidated version of a certain act:

• acts other than general secondary legislation (sector 3) are not consolidated;
• there is no consolidation for acts which are modifiers themselves (consolidation is linked to the basic act);
• acts which will be in force for a short time are not consolidated;
• no consolidation is possible in a certain language version if a basic act has never been translated/published in this language;
• minor corrigenda in a few languages is included in consolidation with the next modifier.

As soon as a legislative act is modified, consolidation is done immediately and systematically. On average 6 weeks should be calculated between the publication of a modifier in the Official Journal and a consolidated version available in EUR-Lex.

These abbreviations indicate the type of act:

• B = basic act
• M = modifier
• A = Accession Treaty
• C = corrigendum