Legal acts – statistics

Consult, by year and by month, the number of legal acts adopted in a given month as well as those repealed and expired in a given month.

For adopted acts, both those in force and those no longer in force are covered. There are separate figures for basic acts and amending acts (acts amending previously adopted acts*). The figures are based on the date an act was adopted. Corrigenda are excluded. The figures for repealed acts and expired acts are based on the end of validity date. Non-legislative acts are in italics.


Adopted acts
Basic Amending
Legislative acts - Ordinary legislative procedure
Regulations of the European Parliament and of the Council 41 18
Directives of the European Parliament and of the Council 63 17
Decisions of the European Parliament and of the Council** 7 2
Total 111 37
Other legislative acts
Council regulations 57 43
Council directives 10 7
Council decisions 219 37
Total 286 87
Non-legislative acts
Delegated acts
Commission delegated regulations 0 0
Commission delegated directives 0 0
Commission delegated decisions 0 0
Total 0 0
Implementing acts
Council implementing regulations 4 1
Council implementing decisions 4 5
Commission implementing regulations*** 0 0
Commission implementing directives 0 0
Commission implementing decisions 0 0
Total 8 6
Other acts
Commission regulations*** 318 234
Commission directives 6 63
Commission decisions 536 112
European Central Bank regulations 0 1
European Central Bank decisions 4 9
European Central Bank guidelines**** 1 9
European Central Bank recommendations 5 0
European Central Bank opinions 100 0
Total 970 428

* For bibliographical reasons, an act is classified as an amending act if according to its title it amends one or more acts, even if it also contains autonomous provisions.

** The vast majority of decisions have addressees (a Member State, a group of Member States, one or more companies). According to Article 288 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) a decision which specifies those to whom it is addressed shall be binding only on them.

*** Ephemeral acts are excluded. Acts related to day-to-day management of agricultural matters (‘ephemeral acts’) are generally valid for a limited period of time. Since 1 March 2011 they have been mainly adopted as Commission implementing regulations. Before that date they were mainly adopted as Commission regulations.

**** ECB Guidelines are legal instruments adopted in accordance with Article 12.1 of the Protocol (No 4) on the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank