Official Journal of the European Union

The Official Journal of the European Union (the OJEU) is the official gazette of record for the European Union (EU). It is published every working day in all of the official languages of the member states of the EU. Only legal acts published in the Official Journal are binding.^[1]

Official Journal of the European Union

Type	Daily official journal
Publisher	European Union
Founded	30 December 1952 (1952-12-30)
Language	Official languages of the EU member states
Headquarters	European Union
Website	eur-lex.europa.eu/oj

History

It was first published on 30 December 1952 as the Official Journal of the European Coal and Steel Community, then renamed Official Journal of the European Communities with the establishment of the European Community, before taking its current title when the Treaty of Nice entered into force on 1 February 2003.^[2]

Since 1998, the journal has been available online via the EUR-Lex service.^{[citation needed]} On 1 July 2013, published issues of the Official Journal began to have legal value only in electronic form, per Article 5 of Regulation (EU) No 216/2013.^[3][4] From this date, the printed version has lost its legal value.^[5] Each issue is published as a set of documents in PDF/A format (one per official language) plus one XML document ensuring the overall coherency through hashes and a qualified electronic signature (a kind of digital signature defined in European law) extended with a trusted time stamp.^[6][7]

Publication

The journal comprises three series:^[8]

• The L series (= Legislation) contains EU legislation including regulations, directives, decisions, recommendations, and opinions.
• The C series (= Courts) contains reports and announcements, including the judgments of the European Court of Justice and the General Court (formerly known as the Court of First Instance).
• The S series (= Supplement) contains invitations to tender for public contracts, along with other notices issued by the European Development Fund and other agencies.

See also

• EUR-Lex
• Directive (European Union)
• European Documentation Centre
• European Union law
• Community acquis
• Public journal
• List of government gazettes
• Official Journal of the European Patent Office
• Publications Office of the European Union
• Tenders Electronic Daily

References

1. "Official Journal of the European Union". Practical Law Glossary. Thomson Reuters. Retrieved 7 June 2020.
2. "Official Journal – History". Interinstitutional Style Guide. Publications Office of the European Union. 2020. Retrieved 7 June 2020.
3. Regulation (EU) No 216/2013 of 7 March 2013 on the electronic publication of the Official Journal of the European Union
4. Rehberg, Jeanne. "European Union Research: Official Journal". New York University Law Library. Retrieved 7 June 2020.
5. "About the electronic edition of the Official Journal - EUR-Lex". eur-lex.europa.eu. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
6. Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 of 23 July 2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market and repealing Directive 1999/93/EC
7. Francesconi, Enrico; Küster, Marc W.; Gratz, Patrick; Thelen, Sebastian (2015). "The Ontology-Based Approach of the Publications Office of the EU for Document Accessibility and Open Data Services". In Kő, Andrea; Francesconi, Enrico (eds.). Electronic Government and the Information Systems Perspective. International Conference on Electronic Government and the Information Systems Perspective. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 9265. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 29–39. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-22389-6_3. ISBN 978-3-319-22388-9.
8. "Structure of the Official Journal". Interinstitutional Style Guide. Publications Office of the European Union. 2019. Retrieved 7 June 2020.

External links

• Online version of the Official Journal
• Online version of the OJEU Supplement ("Tenders Electronic Daily")
• Explanation of the Official Journal of the European Union from the EU Publications Office