EU Legislation

EuroPetition will provide its easy to use ePetitions and collaboration tools to input and ultimately affect EU Legislation. So this is a summary of where to find information on EU Legislation.

The main source is European Documents at http://europa.eu/documents/index_en.htm.

This site sets out all of the EU documents available. It is divided into three sections to facilitate access to legislation, activity reports, brochures, audio-visual material, internal documents, archives, etc. It provides links to

• European law
• Documents common to all the institutions
• Documents of individual institutions

European law

This section outlines the content of the databases covering all European Union law: legislation, the decision making process in the institutions, case law and summaries of legislation, with links to:

• European Union law: EUR-Lex is the portal to European Union law. In addition to its current selection of texts, there are three ways in which information can be accessed:
  • Consulting the Official Journal
  • Searching by criteria
  • Consulting the collections
• Official Journal - The Official Journal, published every working day in 23 languages, consists of three series:
  • L (all binding legislation),
  • C (information, preparatory work, notices and recommendations)
  • Supplement S (tenders) published in the TED database.
• Search engine - A large selection of search criteria is available, search by word, by reference or by document number.
  • Simple search
  • Advanced search
  The EuroPetition system will use this to allow each Local Authority user to find the relevant documents when setting up the links to the EU legislation.
• Collections
• Treaties - The treaties are the primary source of European Union law. All treaties are available on this site, including the Draft Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe.
• Legislation - All legislative acts adopted by the European institutions in accordance with the treaties are available here:
  • Search by criteria
  • Directory of legislation
  EuroPetition will use this to allow each Local Authority user to find the relevant EU legislative acts when setting up the links to the EU legislation.
• Legislation in preparation – this contains preparatory documents (COM document) used in the various stages of the legislative or budgetary process. This will be used by EuroPetition to identify potential upcoming legislation that may be relevant to decisions made in the Regional Council.
• Case law - The case law section contains the decisions and opinions of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the decisions of the Court of First Instance and the conclusions of the Advocates General in their published version the Digest of Case Law, as well as provisional texts published by the Court. Future developments of the EuroPetition services may provide links to this interesting sources of EU case law.
• Parliamentary questions - This section contains the written and oral questions put by Members of the European Parliament to the Commission and Council, together with the reply from the institution concerned.
• The legislative process: ( EIL and Pre-Lex )
• Case law
• Summaries of legislation
• Codecision

Documents common to all the institutions

This section lists the sites covering the documents or activities of all the European Institutions.

1. EU Bookshop the publications Portal , lists all free and for-sale publications of the European Union institutions and, agencies as well as other decentralised bodies of the EU dealing with publications.
2. Bulletin of the European Union provides a monthly insight into the activities of the European Commission and the other Community institutions.
3. The Bulletin is supplemented bythe General Report on the Activities of the European Union which provides an overview of the activities of the previous year.
4. Historical Archives of the European Union , administered by the European University Institute in Florence, give access to referenced documents more than 30 years old via the EURHISTAR database.
5. glossary traces the development of some 220 terms relating to European integration and the institutions and activities of the EU.

Documents of individual European Institutions

These are the published documents (Community legislation, proposals, communications, reports, green and white papers), document registers (listing published and unpublished documents), audio-visual material, access to bibliographic databases and the list of brochures and publications available on the sites of the European institutions.

Three institutions (European Parliament, Council and Commission) have set up document registers giving access to the references of public documents and internal documents (those which have not yet been adopted or which are not intended for publication) and, in some cases, to the full texts. Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 governs public access to documents. If a document belonging to an institution has not been made public, it can be made accessible on request, provided it is not covered by one of the exceptions set out in the Regulation.

• European Parliament
  • Official documents - This section describes the various types of document published on the Europarl site: agendas, draft reports and opinions, reports adopted in committee, part session minutes, texts adopted by Parliament, resolutions, debates in plenary, parliamentary questions, etc.
  • EP Live - brings online Internet coverage of events and debates from the European Parliament. Through webstreaming users can see and hear Parliament’s plenary sessions as they happen. This may be linked in directly to the EuroPetition Public-i for specifically relevant debates for our Regional citizens.
  • Register: access to internal documents - The public register of European Parliament documents contains references and documents that have been in the public domain since 3 December 2001. These have to be specifically requested.
  • Bulletin - The Bulletin covers the monthly activities of Parliament and its members, the calendars of meetings and post session follow up.
  • Fact sheets The aim of the fact sheets is to provide an overview of the building of Europe.
  • Audio visual material The "Audiovisual facilities" section includes video, radio and photographs. This is another resource that will be used by EuroPetition for specific requirements.
  • European Parliament archives The archives can be consulted by appointment at the following address:

Extensive EU legislative information is available online from further sources, such as the following, but these will not be extensively addressed within the scope of the current project.

• Council of the European Union
• European Council
• European Commission
• Court of Justice and Court of First Instance
• Court of Auditors
• European Ombudsman
• European Data Protection Supervisor
• European Central Bank
• European Investment Bank
• European Economic and Social Committee
• Committee of the Regions