Researching Legal Information
in the European Union
Presented by Alison A. Shea
Reference Librarian and Adjunct Professor of Law,
Fordham University School of Law
What is the European Union?

A “unique economic and political
partnership between 27 democratic
European countries”

Primarily created to avoid any future
inter-Europe wars and to encourage
more cross-border cooperation in
commercial matters (“internal market”)
What isn’t the European Union?
Council of Europe
 European Court of Human Rights

• “Do not get confused” chart (that’s the real
name of the webpage!)
– http://www.coe.int/aboutcoe/index.asp?page=n
epasconfondre&l=en
Hypo
Does this
agreement fall
foul of EU law?
Two leading low-cost carriers, Scaryair
(based in Dublin) and Skeezyjet
(based in the UK) currently have an estimated 35% of
the market share of the total UK and Ireland domestic
routes.
Scaryair approach SkeezyJet about the
possibility of coming to some sort of agreement
whereby Scaryair would agree to
drop some of its UK domestic routes
that SkeezyJet also operates in
return for SkeezyJet agreeing not
to start a new service from UK-Ireland.
Hierarchy of EU Law
Treaties
(Primary Legislation)
Regulations, directives,
decisions
(Secondary Legislation)
General
Principles
of Law
Case Law
Treaties
between
Member States
Where to start?
Europa – EU’s main info portal
 http://www.europa.eu
 Provides
a gateway for locating EU
information
• Use this page to access various EU legal
information portals
• Search by Policy Area if you know what
subject matter you’re looking for
• Do a site-wide search if you’re not sure
where to begin
– Press releases are required to contain links to
relevant docs
LOCATING INFORMATION
ON A TOPIC
If you are starting from
scratch, try browsing
Policy Area for relevant
links
Search function is not
very good, but
remember that press
If you have a citation,
you can locate itreleases are now
required to link to
through the links under
Legislation and primary source
Treaties documents referred to,
so they may be useful
LOCATING INFORMATION
ON A TOPIC
Narrative descriptionLinks to relevant
Links to relevant
of the policy area—laws in this policy
other sites, i.e. DG
area
for the “average Joe”
Comp
LOCATING INFORMATION
ON A TOPIC
LOCATING INFORMATION
ON A TOPIC
LOCATING INFORMATION
ON A TOPIC
LOCATING INFORMATION
ON A TOPIC
Example #1

I’m looking for legislation that deals with
Bathing Water quality. I don’t have a
cite, and don’t know how exactly it’s
regulated or by whom.
• When you are looking for general policy, try
starting with Europa
• Remember that press releases are now
required to contain links to the relevant
documents, so try searching the site
• Also, you can browse the “Policy Areas” to
try and locate the relevant DG for that topic
From the main Europa page, you can either
search the site for relevant hits, or browse
through the policy areas to locate the
relevant DG for this area
At the bottom of the
press release are links
to the documents
mentioned—which
show that the relevant
DG is Environment—
and also the citations
to the relevant
legislation
This is the relevant DG
for bathing water
quality—you can now
browse for links to
relevant legislation and
other policy document
Where do we find EU legal information?
Primary legislation: Treaties
 Source
of primary legislation
 Current treaties in force:
• Consolidated Treaty on European Union
(TEU)
• Consolidated Treaty on the Functioning of
the European Union (TFEU)
• Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU

All treaties can be found here:
• http://eurlex.europa.eu/JOHtml.do?uri=OJ:C:2010:0
83:SOM:EN:HTML
Treaty of Lisbon

What’s the big deal?
•
•
•
•

Greater democracy and transparency
Simplification and more efficient working
Single voice on the international stage
Promoting rights and values
Key issues to watch will be what the EU
does with increased power in foreign
policy and justice, freedom and
security
Treaty of Lisbon
 Completely
renumbers existing Treaty
articles
• ECJ recommends references to an article of
the Treaty as it stood before 1 May 1999,
the revised numbering should be given in
brackets, e.g. ‘Article 85 of the EC Treaty
(now Article 81 EC)’.
• References to the Treaty as it stands after
1999 should read ‘Article 234 EC’.
 “Table
of Equivalencies” for old and new
article numbers available here:
• 2010 OJ(C 83) 361
This page has not
been updated!!!!
Still lists Articles 8189 instead of 101109!!
BB translation:
2010 O.J. (C 83) 88
Official Journal

The OJ has been published since 1967
• two main series:
– L (Legislation)
– C (Communication = Information and Notices).
• published daily in 22 of the 23 official languages.
 Available
on Eur-Lex
• You can now get PDFs back to 1973 in
English, 1968 for original EC languages
• “Certified” PDF version available—on the
way to becoming “authentic” versions
Example #3

Can I get a full text version of the
following cite: 1990 O.J. (L 180) 26
• Since you already have the OJ cite, use
Eur-Lex to search by OJ reference and
simply fill in the relevant information:
– Year: 1990
– OJ Series: L
– OJ Number: 180
– Page: 26
To get the authentic fulltext scan of the original
document, click on PDF
Secondary Legislation
 Regulations
• binding legal force throughout every Member State
 Directives
• lay down certain end results that must be achieved in
every Member State
• national authorities have to adapt their laws to meet
these goals, but are free to decide how to do so.
• may concern one or more Member States, or all of
them.
 Decisions
• Binding in entirety but only to those Member States or
entities to whom addressed
 Recommendations/Opinions
• No binding force
How to Find EU Legislation
• Eur-Lex
– Retrieve by citation if you have it already
– Try using the Directory of Legislation in Force to
browse through topical areas
• Europa
– Summary of EU Legislation in force
• Through the relevant Commission group’s
website
– List of relevant DG sites:
• http://ec.europa.eu/about/ds_en.htm
• Lexis (EURCOM;LEGIS)
• Westlaw (EU-LEG)
Example #4

Locate Directive 2011/7/EU. What is it
about?
• Since you have the document number
already, simply go to Eur-Lex and search
by document number

Is it published in an official source?
• The Official Journal is the official source for
all EU legislation
Select PDF for
official full text
version
Official full text
version—to create
cite, note data
above: year 2011,
journal series: L,
journal volume 48,
page 1.
DIRECTORY OF EU
LEGISLATION IN FORCE
Use Directory of EU
legislation in force when you
wish to browse relevant law
for a particular topic
Each topic breaks down even further to
more discrete topics; however results are
listed in reverse chronological order, not
in order of importance to that topic
RETRIEVING LEGISLATION
Easiest way to
retrieve legislation
by citation—by
document number.
You will still retrieve
to the OJ version
RETRIEVING LEGISLATION
You can retrieve not only
legislation but also
preparatory docs, case law,
and national execution
measures by citation here
RETRIEVING LEGISLATION
Select Bibliographic notice for
“annotations”—if this were a directive,
always select this feature to locate
national implementing legislation
Select PDF for
official full text
version from OJ
“ANNOTATIONS”
Affected by case:
Case law that
litigates this
particular piece of
legislation
CELEX numbers
“6” stands for
Sector 6, which is
case law
“ANNOTATIONS”
Procedure =
Legislative History
Relationship
between
documents= where
to find amendments
Tracking EU legislation
 To
track pending/proposed legislation
(similar to Thomas in the US), use these
sources which have the same
information, just organized by two
different groups
• Pre-Lex
– http://ec.europa.eu/prelex/apcnet.cfm?CL=en
• Legislative Observatory
– http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/index.jsp?la
nguage=en
European Commission – COM docs
 The
EC is the only body who can
propose legislation, and they do this in
the form of a COM document
 There is usually a lengthy period of
consultation and amendment before
COM Documents become public, and
only the final version is published.
Consequently, they are cited in the
format:
• COM (year) running number, final
Where to find EC documents
 Registry
of Commission Documents
 Pre-Lex or Legislative Observatory
 Eur-Lex
• All of the above sources allow for retrieval
by citation
 If
you do not know what you are looking
for but prefer to browse, try the
Commission page for the policy area
COM Docs through PRE-LEX
COM Docs through PRE-LEX
Almost exactly the
same information as
presented on
Legislative
Observatory, just a
different format
(more colorful?)
Court of Justice of the European Union

Three main competencies:
• reviews the legality of the acts of the
institutions of the European Union,
• ensures that the Member States comply
with obligations under the Treaties, and
• interprets European Union law at the
request of the national courts and tribunals

Consists of three courts:
• the Court of Justice
• the General Court (created in 1988)
• the Civil Service Tribunal (created in 2004).
Where to find EU cases & decisions

Eur-Lex
• http://eur-lex.europa.eu/RECH_jurisprudence.do

Curia
• http://curia.europa.eu/\

European Court Reports (E.C.R.) [official]
• Part I contains the ECJ cases and AdvocateGeneral Opinions
• Part II contains the CFI/GC cases.
• Traditionally only print….
– HOWEVER….they are working to link PDFs of
ECR decisions to all cases from 1992—will say
“PDF” in the bibliographic record if available.
Also EU Bookshop now has incomplete coverage
PDFs of the ECR going back to 2005 on its
website
SEARCHING EUR-LEX
FOR CASE LAW
Instead, try simple
search to search by
word, date, party
name, etc.
“Case law” is not
very useful—just
brings you to a
browse-by-date
screen
SEARCHING EUR-LEX
FOR CASE LAW
Select “search terms” to full
text search
You can browse all cases in
certain topic areas by
selecting “Subject matter”
“Digest of case-law” is not
as useful as it seems--only
really good to browse by
legal basis of case
SEARCHING EUR-LEX
FOR CASE LAW
When searching Eur-Lex
remember to distinguish
what you want to search—
default search is only to
Titles and subject heading
SEARCHING EUR-LEX
FOR CASE LAW
Example #4

“Would you please send me the ECJ
judgment in Kanal 5 (2008). Thanks.”
• When looking for a case, try starting with
Curia, the European Courts’ official
website. You can also search case law
using Eur-Lex

Is there an official version available?
• Eur-Lex provides ECR citations, but there
is no electronic version of the ECR version
as of yet
Curia’s simple search box on the front page makes it easy to
locate cases using basic data—in this instance, we know the
name of the party (Kanal 5—but only input “Kanal” incase the
decision spells out the number), the court (Court of Justice),
and the date (2008, although with the distinctive party name
we probably don’t even need the date)
Be sure you are aware of which result is the
one that you want—for example, the OJ cite
“looks” official but is only a summary of the
judgement, not the actual full text. Also, be
aware of the difference between the judgment
and the Advocate Generals’ Opinion (which
preceeds the actual judgment)
Unofficial (but
reliable) full text of
the judgement
Now that you have
the case number
(C-52/07) you can
easily retrieve the
case through EurLex; it will not give
you the official
version, but will
give you the cite to
the official reporter
This is the official reporter
citation---2008 ECR I-9275
SEARCHING FOR CASE
LAW BY TOPIC
To access
advanced search
features, click on
the tiny graphic with
the magnifying
glass
SEARCHING FOR CASE
LAW BY TOPIC
Under the “Field”
heading, select the
relevant topic and
adjust other field
(type of document,
Court, date, etc)
SEARCHING FOR CASE
LAW BY TOPIC
All cases for that topic
GOING BACK TO 1997-not a complete reflection of
EU case law on a topic
Dockets
 There
are NO procedural documents
available for EU case law; if you want
them, you must apply to the Registry
and even then they might not release
them, especially if you are not an EU
citizen
Advocate General opinions
 The
advocates general assist the Court
in its task.
• They deliver, in open court and with
complete impartiality and independence,
opinions on the cases brought before the
Court.
• duties should not be confused with those of
a prosecutor or similar official--that is the
role of the Commission, as guardian of the
Community’s interests
 Use
Curia to search for AG opinions
SEARCHING ADVOCATEGENERAL OPINIONS
Be sure you are aware of which result is the
one that you want—for example, the OJ cite
“looks” official but is only a summary of the
judgment, not the actual full text. Also, be
aware of the difference between the judgment
and the Advocate Generals’ Opinion (which
precedes the actual judgment)
Example #5

Could you give me a list of all EU cases
that deal with free movement of goods
that have been decided in the past
year?
• You can easily search cases by topic using
Curia
To access
advanced search
features, click on
the tiny graphic with
the magnifying
glass
Under the “Field”
heading, select the
relevant topic
Limit your dates
and, if you want,
limit the type of
documents that will
be returned so as to
weed out any
unnecessary hits
Special note about competition cases

Competition law cases start as commission
investigations, which result in a decision
• Similar to US FTC decision

The DG Comp has a great database for
searching commission decisions taken in the
areas of:
•
•
•
•

Antitrust
Cartels
Mergers
State Aid
Many decisions also available through Eur-Lex
but much better interface and organization on
DG Comp page
SEARCHING COMPETITION CASES
SEARCHING COMPETITION CASES
SEARCHING COMPETITION CASES
Commonly cited as:
Case COMP/39.596
Are we finished?
Primary
Article 101 of the TFEU
Secondary
Regulation 1/2003
Case
law
European Court cases
Commission decisions
Preparatory
DOMESTIC LAW!
Researching domestic law

Each Member State will have its own
domestic laws on any topic and will need
to be referenced together with EU law
• Use traditional foreign legal research
methods to locate EU laws
• If you are referencing a Directive, use the
National Implementing legislation link within
the bibliographic record
• Try using N-lex, especially if you are
unfamiliar with the Member State’s language
Researching domestic law

There is an excellent resource called EuroVoc
which is a multilingual, multidisciplinary
thesaurus covering the activities of the EU, the
European Parliament in particular.
• Allows users to search domestic law throughout all
EU countries without having to know the native
language
• contains terms in 22 EU languages (Bulgarian,
Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish,
French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian,
Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese,
Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and
Swedish), plus Croatian and Serbian.