CELEX numbers

Sector

Documents in EUR-Lex fall into one of 12 sectors.

1. Treaties

2. International agreements

3. Legal acts

4. Complementary legislation

5. Preparatory documents

6. EU case-law

7. National transposition

8. References to national case-law concerning EU law

9. Parliamentary questions

0. Consolidated texts

C. Other documents published in the Official Journal C series

E. EFTA documents

Year

The year is usually the year when the document was adopted.

Document type

Each document type has a descriptor. Descriptors can have 1, 2 or 3 letters.

Some common descriptors:

Sector 3 - Legal acts

L for Directives

R for Regulations

D for Decisions

Sector 5 - Preparatory documents

PC for Legislative proposals by the Commission (COM documents, etc.)

DC for other COM documents (green and white papers, communications, reports, etc.)

SC for SWD documents (staff working documents, impact assessments, etc.)

DMA/DSA for competition-related documents (e.g. communications) concerning the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act

Sector 6 - EU case-law

CJ for Judgments by the Court of Justice

CC for Opinions of the advocate-general

CO for Orders of the Court of Justice

Document number

CELEX numbers end in 4, 5 or 6 digits. These reflect different types of information, e.g.:

• Official number: a sequential number attributed to the document when it is published in the Official Journal. It is assigned by the Publications Office.

Example 32017R2394

• Internal number: it is assigned by the document's author, for instance the European Commission in the examples below.

Examples: 52018PC0033 / 32025M12119 / 52024DSA100121

• Official Journal number (since 1 October 2023): it is preceded by a ‘0’.

Examples: 32025B02730 or 52025XG02954

Before 1 October 2023, the CELEX numbers that did not end with an official number or an internal number ended with the month and day of the act’s publication in the Official Journal, followed by a sequential number in brackets (e.g. ‘(01)’). If several acts were published on the same day, the number in brackets changed sequentially.

Examples: 32012A0424(01)

22021P0908(01) / 22021P0908(02)

Examples by sector

• Treaties (sector 1)

  There are 3 digits or letters after the descriptor. The digits indicate the number of an article of the treaty. The letters are abbreviations, i.e. TXT for complete text, N for annexes, DCL for declarations, PRO for protocols.

  Example: 11957E086 is the number for Article 86 of the EEC treaty (1957).

  Consolidated versions of treaties are indicated by the year of consolidation.

  Example: Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union:

  12016E – table of contents, consolidated version 2016

  12016E/TXT – consolidated version 2016

  12016E003 – Article 3, consolidated version 2016.

• International agreements (sector 2)

  Before 1 October 2023, international agreements were identified by their publication date, followed by a number in brackets.

  Example: International agreement 22006A1230(01) was published in the Official Journal on 30 December 2006.

  If several agreements were published on the same day, only the number in brackets changed: 22006A1230 (01) / 22006A1230 (02) / 22006A1230 (03).

  Example: 22025X01962

• Case-law (sector 6)

  The year is the one in which the case entered the Court’s register.

  The document number is based on the case number issued by the Court of Justice.

  Example: 62004TJ0201 relates to the judgment in the 201st case entered in the register in 2004. The case number is T-201/04.

• National transposition measures (sector 7)

  The first 10 characters are identical to those of the CELEX number of the transposed act, with the exception of the first one, which represents the CELEX sector: 3 (‘Legal acts’) and is replaced by 7 (‘National transposition’). The following 9 characters represent the year, type and official number of the transposed act.

  After the first 10 characters, a 3-letter country code indicates the Member State that is the author of the national transposition measure.

  At the end of the CELEX number, the number following the underscore is the unique identifier from the database of the Secretariat-General of the Commission.

  Examples:

  72018L2002POL_285543

  72013L0032AUT_202103576

  Identifiers with an asterisk are used for display purposes only, when the same unique transposition measure implements more than one legal act. They are not real CELEX numbers. The asterisk replaces the part of the identifier inherited from the transposed acts.

  Example: 7*EST_202103476 is displayed for a measure transposing 2 directives.

  There are 2 different CELEX numbers attributed to this measure: 72013L0034EST_202103476 and 72014L0095EST_202103476

• Corrigenda

  Corrigenda have the same number as the document they are correcting, with R(xx) added at the end (xx being the number of the corrigendum).

  Example: 32009L0164R(01) is the first corrigendum to Directive 32009L0164.

  A corrigendum may relate to one or more language versions – or even all of them.

• Consolidated texts (sector 0)

  Consolidated texts have the same number as the basic act – but their sector is ‘0’.

  The number is followed by the date of application of the last amendment to the act.

  Example: 02009L0156-20161018

  More information on consolidated texts

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How CELEX numbers are composed (in English only)