Although the original version of Europa, launched in in 1995, simply provided a basic overview of European policies, the site has now become a single access point for official information from all the European institutions. Researchers at all levels, from school children to professors, can find relevant material, and also have direct access to official documents, most of which are now published online. According to its own statistics, Europa currently contains over 6 million documents, taking into account different language versions.
The European Commission has been a leader in the use of information technology since the 1960s, largely because of the logistical problems of producing legal documents simultaneously in a number of official languages. Europe pioneered the use of services like automated translation tools and developed full text databases well before most individual countries. Celex, the official legal database, was originally set up in 1969 and was followed by a number of specialist databases, all of which were developed originally for the internal use of the Commission. Although many were made available to specialists in European information, like the network of European Documentation Centres based in universities around the world, access outside these networks was normally only possible through commercial versions provided by services like Justis, Lawtel, LexisNexis and Westlaw.
Free online access
Since the arrival of the internet, free online versions of these databases have been provided as part of the new improved Europa. However, because European law is still a very specialised field, a fairly detailed knowledge of how the European Union works is needed to make the best use of these services.
A user-friendly web version of Celex was launched in 1997 to improve access to European legal information and this became free, thanks to a resolution of the European Parliament. A second service, Eur-Lex, was officially opened by the European Commission in 2001 to provide a single portal which could be used both by lawyers and the general public. While its creation was prompted by a new drive for openness, it also provided huge gains in efficiency because official documents, especially the Official Journal, could now be published online. Although the more comprehensive Celex was initially run in parallel, the two sites were combined at the end of 2004 to create a single free access database and Celex has now been closed down.
Eur-Lex has benefited from the huge amount of work put into making Celex more user-friendly and is continually improving. As it has absorbed the contents of the older database, it now contains an impressive amount of material (1,400,000 documents in total, according to the website) much of it available in all (currently 23) official languages. Access to the database is free and straightforward, although a basic knowledge of Community law and institutions is needed.
“Collections” on Eur-Lex
Eur-Lex is now the essential source of legislative documentation from the EU and is more or less complete. This has been achieved partly by using links to other services within the institutions to avoid duplication of effort. In addition to both series of the Official Journal (Legislation and Information and Notices), which are available since 1998 in full text in PDF format, the database consists of six distinct collections: Treaties, International Agreements, Legislation in Force, Preparatory Acts, Case Law and Parliamentary Questions. These can either be searched individually or by a General search across all files. The Simple search form is straightforward to use, with full explanations given for each option, and is adequate for most people’s needs An alerting service, LexAlert, is still promised but is not yet available. Most early documents are only available in HTML, although recent publications are usually also available in PDF. The first two collections, Treaties and International Agreements, have only recently been completed.
Treaties actually only contains the text of the treaties published in the Official Journal since 1997, although earlier texts can be ordered online.
International Agreements are joint agreements made with third countries or international organisations, and the file can be searched by subject or by browsing the classified sequence. Links are also provided to the databases maintained by the Council of the European Union and by the European Commission.
Although the printed Directory stopped publication in 2004, Legislation in Force is still updated online on Eur-Lex. The classified sequence is a useful way of checking the legislation in a particular area of law and whether it has been amended, although the arrangement can sometimes be ambiguous, and it is easier to use the shortcuts provided by Europa mentioned below.
The only kind of Preparatory Acts available so far are Commission (COM) documents, which includes all draft legislation but also includes Commission reports of all kinds. The Simple search form allows other kinds of document to be searched, including the resolutions of the European Parliament, but the collections cannot be browsed in the same way.
The Case Law section has the text of the European Court Reports since the beginnings of the European Court of Justice, in 1954, and is now updated on a daily basis. Since the official texts are now published at least two years late because of the delays caused by translation and legal checking, this has improved public access hugely. The file is searchable in a variety of ways, although searching by parties is not yet available.
A wide range of help features have now been incorporated into Eur-Lex, both at the level of individual screens and as detailed guides available by clicking on the Help button on the top toolbar.
Keeping up to date
Another major improvement in Eur-Lex has been in linking to other services. Although it has been possible for many years to track the progress of legislation by using the Legislative Observatory of the European Parliament (OEIL) and PreLex, which monitors the decision-making process between institutions, these services have been under-publicised and difficult to use. Now both have been re-designed and linked to Eur-Lex. If you need to find either how a current proposal for legislation is progressing or to see if a directive is now in force, click on the bibliographic description below the entry and scroll down to Procedure, where links will take you directly to the relevant section. Both of these databases give a complete list of all the documents produced in the legislative process and provide links to any available electronic versions.
Another feature which has been promised for many years is a way of tracing how directives are implemented in individual member states. Sadly there is still no reliable way of doing this through Eur-Lex, although a lot of development work has been put into N-Lex, which is linked to the home page of Eur-Lex, although it is still flagged up as “experimental”. N-Lex uses the Eurovoc thesaurus to find standard terms to search national legal databases, but the procedure is very laborious and there is still no reliable alternative to commercial services at a national level.
Court of Justice
Until the recent improvements made to Eur-Lex, Curia, the website of the European Court of Justice at (www.curia.europa.eu) was an essential source of information for anyone needing the most up to date judgments and opinions, since the draft versions have been uploaded on the site since 1997. As these are now readily available on Eur-Lex, Curia’s case law section is less vital, although the party name search function does work here. Other areas of the site are still extremely useful, however, particularly in the section on European Union law in Europe. Since the Court is the final arbiter in interpreting the provisions of the Treaty, it maintains collections of decisions made by national courts and also has a comprehensive directory of institutional and legal internet sites in all member states. There is also an essential collection of documents on the Brussels and Lugano Conventions, the basis on which the jurisdiction to be used in a case is decided.
Cooperation with other countries
Developments in Justice and Home Affairs, the so-called third pillar of the European Union, are gradually extending the areas of cooperation between the police and judiciary in different member states. As more people move around Europe, legal research increasingly requires some knowledge of other jurisdictions. A number of sources of information have been established, which are valuable to citizens as well as to legal practitioners. One of the most important is the European Judicial Network in civil and commercial matters. This site provides summaries of the legal system in each member state of the EU and detailed accounts of court procedures and rules in areas such as divorce and arbitration.
Where else to look on Europa
While Eur-Lex is the prime source for legal research, there are other areas of Europa which are equally useful. To make it easier to find all relevant information on a given subject Europa now has a menu of 32 policy areas under the heading Activities. Each subject page is divided into two columns: a list of key sites on the left hand side is headed by a link to the home page of the relevant Directorate-General within the Commission; summaries of legislation on the right provide a useful shortcut to the legal information, while below, direct links are provided to the appropriate sections of the Treaty and to other legal texts.
Although all the Directorate-Generals’ sites have some legal information, a few are particularly important for detailed legal research. The Competition website is one of the most valuable, as it has extensive collections of legislation, decisions and court judgments and is essential for anyone interested in competition policy. It is intended for specialist users, however, and has little introductory material, although there are sections on specific sectors, eg services and sport, and policies.
DG Employment and Social Affairs has a well-organised site for serious research on all aspects of employment law and policy. It includes collections of legislation and implementation reports, as well as background reports and collections of key documents.
DG Internal Market’s website is an essential source of information for business lawyers, especially in areas like company law, copyright and financial services. Although most of the information is aimed at specialists, there are also services designed specifically for citizens and businesses.
Commercial providers
Since Eur-Lex now provides such an extensive service for free, the role of commercial services like Justis, LexisNexis Butterworths and Westlaw in providing access to European law is becoming less obvious. Until recently they were able to point to a definite advantage in value by uploading documents – particularly case law – that was delayed in Eur-Lex, by indexing and by including the text of non-official series, such as All ER (European cases). Most of the major legal databases have re-designed their sites recently and, apart from Lawtel, have integrated their European content into general searches for cases and legislation rather than providing separate access to EU materials. The advantage offered by any of these services is in providing a context to EU law for lawyers operating at a national level. It is, however, well worth investigating the vast amount of information now provided free.
Patrick Overy has run the European Documentation Centre as part of the Law Library at the University of Exeter for 15 years. He was co-ordinator of the UK’s EDCs, the official network of academic information relays, for two years and has taught and written on EU information for the European Commission and for the European Information Association. He is also a list-owner of eurodoc, an international mail list for EU documentalists.
Email P.C.Overy@exeter.ac.uk.
A fuller version of this article is published in the Legal Web e-book on Legal Information and Web 2.0 (www.infolaw.co.uk/ebooks).
