EU law

The Official Journal of the European Union (OJ) is the main source of EUR-Lex content. It is published daily (from Monday to Friday regularly, on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays only in urgent cases) in the official languages. There are 2 series:

→ L (legislation)

→ C (information and notices)

See more on the EUR-lex and the numbering system here.

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12. Method of assigning legal materials. See: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/content/help/faq/intro.html#top

Effective 1 July 2013, the electronic edition of the OJ (e-OJ) is authentic and produces legal effects.

The numbering and referencing of documents published before 1 January 2015 or in a series other than the L series of the OJ do not change. The only element affected by the change is the number assigned by the Publications Office; other elements in the title remain unchanged. CELEX numbers (document identifiers used in the EUR-Lex database) continue to be built in the same way, based on the components of the number assigned by the Publications Office. For more information on CELEX numbers, see http://eurlex.europa.eu/content/help/faq/intro.html#top.

Special cases

1. The new numbering does not apply to certain documents such as:

▪ international agreements and information on the date of their entry into force;

▪ corrigenda.

These documents remain unnumbered.

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Office at the moment of their publication in the OJ and a number previously assigned by the author:

▪ ECB legal acts and instruments, for example, Decision (EU) 2015/33 of the European Central Bank … (ECB/2015/1)

▪ Political and Security Committee decisions, for example, Political and Security Committee Decision (CFSP) 2015/258 … (EUBAM Libya/1/2015)

The number assigned by the Publications Office to the following documents will not contain the domain element and will be placed at the end of the title in square brackets:

▪ acts adopted by bodies created by international agreements, for example, Decision No 2/2015 of the ACP–EU Committee of Ambassadors … [2015/45]

▪ acts adopted within the framework of the European Economic Area (EEA), for example, Decision of the EEA Joint Committee No 58/2015 … [2015/100]

▪ acts adopted within the framework of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), for example, Decision of the EFTA Surveillance Authority No 02/10/COL … [2015/101]

▪ regulations of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN/ECE), for example, Regulation No 28 of the Economic Commission for Europe of the United Nations (UN/ECE) … [2015/46]

a) Method of citing EU legal sources: OJ via EUR-lex

Check the website of the EU: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/homepage.html?locale=en

13. EUR-Lex. Opening page. Source: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/homepage.html?locale=en

b) Method of citing caselaw: ECLI via EUR-lex

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A European Case-Law Identifier (ECLI) is intended to provide an unambiguous reference to both national and European case-law and to define a minimum set of uniform metadata for case-law. It thus facilitates the consultation and citation of case-law in the European Union.

The ECLI is composed of the following four mandatory elements, in addition to the prefix ‘ECLI’:

• the code corresponding to the Member State of the court or tribunal concerned or to the European Union where it is an EU Court;

• the abbreviation corresponding to the court or tribunal which delivered the decision;

• the year of the decision;

• an ordinal number of a maximum of 25 alphanumeric characters, in a format decided by each Member State or by the supranational court or tribunal concerned. The ordinal number may not contain any punctuation marks other than full stops (‘.’) or colons (‘:’), the latter separating the components of an ECLI.

Following the recommendation of the Council that the Court of Justice of the European Union adopts the European Case-Law Identifier system, the Court has assigned an ECLI to all decisions delivered by the Courts of the European Union since 1954 and to the Opinions and Views of the Advocates General.¹

For example, the ECLI of the judgment of the Court of Justice of 12 July 2005, Schempp (C-403/03), is: ‘EU: C:2005:446’.

This is broken down as follows:

• ‘EU’ indicates that it is a decision delivered by one of the Courts of the European Union (for decisions of national courts or tribunals, the code corresponding to the relevant Member State will appear instead of ‘EU’);

• ‘C’ indicates that this decision was delivered by the Court of Justice (decisions delivered by the General Court would be indicated by the letter ‘T’ and those of the Civil Service Tribunal by ‘F’);

• ‘2005’ indicates that the decision was delivered in 2005;

• ‘446’ indicates that it is the 446^th ECLI assigned in respect of the year in question.

The method of citing the case-law adopted by the Court of Justice of the European Union combines the ECLI with the usual name of the decision and the case number in the register. It has gradually been brought into use by each EU Court/Tribunal since the first half of 2014 and was harmonised as between the Courts of the European Union in 2016.

1 Council conclusions of 29 April 2011 inviting the introduction of the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) and a minimum set of uniform metadata for case law (OJ 2011 C 127, p. 1).

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14. Explanation of CJEU referencing. Source: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/jcms/P_126035/en/