European Union: IALS Library Guides

Guide last updated by Hester Swift, September 2025

The European Union (EU) developed from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), all of which were founded in the 1950s. It became the 'European Union' under the Maastricht Treaty of 1992; this treaty provided that the European Communities should remain in existence as part of the EU and changed the name of the European Economic Community to 'European Community' (EC). The Coal and Steel Community was wound up in 2002 and the European Community ceased to exist in December 2009 when it was subsumed into the European Union under the Treaty of Lisbon. Euratom, which is still going, has a separate legal personality to the EU (see EUR-Lex summary of the Euratom Treaty).

From the original six states of the 1950s, membership has increased to a total of twenty-seven today. The UK joined in 1973 and left on 31 January 2020.

The EU has its own courts, the Court of Justice and the General Court (formerly 'Court of First Instance'). From 2004 until September 2016, it also had a third court, the Civil Service Tribunal, but this body has been dissolved and its jurisdiction transferred to the General Court.

The main legislative and policy-making bodies of the European Union are the Council of the European Union (also known as the 'Council of Ministers'), the European Parliament and the European Commission. The official publisher is the Publications Office of the European Union.

The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library has a substantial collection of European Union material of legal interest, dating from the 1950s to the present day; it is not, however, an EU depository. Larger collections of EU official publications can be found at the British Library, the London School of Economics Library (British Library of Political and Economic Science), and other UK libraries that were, until Brexit, designated European Documentation Centres.

At IALS, the main EU collection is on the fourth floor (classmarks GO1.A1 and FOL GO1.A1), with some additional material in the Short Loan Collection and the basement Reserve; many online resources are also available. Further details are given below.

The Official Journal of the European Union (formerly Official Journal of the European Communities, until February 2003) is the EU’s official gazette. The print edition ceased publication at the end of 2013 (except for the public procurement supplement, or 'S Series', which ceased print publication in 1998).

From October 2023, the EU changed the way it published the OJ. It is no longer divided into numbered issues containing several documents: instead, each document is considered to be an issue of the OJ ('act by act publication').

Series and sub-series
Official Journal of the European Union / European Communities. Legislation (L series / OJ L), 1968 - . Publishes secondary legislation and some primary legislation. Used to be the designated authentic source of EU legislation, but from 1 July 2013 the online version was given authentic status instead.

Official Journal of the European Union / Communities. Information and Notices (C series / OJ C), 1968 -  ('C' from the French subtitle, Communications et Informations).  Publishes most primary legislation, preparatory legislative documents, European Parliament minutes, case summaries and other material.

Official Journal. Supplement  (S series / OJ S). Publishes public procurement notices.

Before October 2023, some OJ issues used to have 'E', 'A' or 'I' after the issue number, e.g. OJ C 183E, OJ L 305I:

• ​​OJ CE subseries (31 August 1999 to 28 March 2014); online-only supplements to the print edition ('E' for 'electronic'); published documents such as European Parliament minutes and Council common positions. The OJ CE was no longer required once the entire OJ was online-only, though it continued for a few months.
   
• ​OJ CA subseries: (early 1980s to 2022, original title, Annex to Official Journal...): initially used to publish very large documents; later devoted to job advertisements.
• OJ LI and OJ CI subseries (January 2016 to September 2023): 'CI and 'LI' issues are published occasionally when a change is needed to the planned content of the OJ.

OJ LI and OJ CA/CI/CE issues can be displayed on the OJ page of EUR-Lex using the 'OJ Series' filter.

Online sources
The Official Journal is on the European Union's EUR-Lex website from 1952 to the present (except for the OJ S, which is on TED). Each issue is authenticated with a digital signature from July 2013 to September 2023; from October 2023, each document has its own digital signature.

The English Special Edition of the OJ, containing English translations of laws in force when the UK and Ireland joined in 1973, is also on EUR-Lex (as are other special editions produced for new member states).

The OJ S is on the Tenders Electronic Daily platform (TED), with a ten-year archive (see Help - Search scope). 

Westlaw UK and Lexis+ UK (see IALS Law Databases page) both include the contents of the L Series back to the 1950s, as individual legislative instruments, not journal issues (like the EUR-Lex version from October 2023).

Westlaw UK has documents published in the C Series back to about 1980, plus a few 1970s documents (under 'Information and Notices'). Lexis+ UK has them back to 2000 (under 'EU Materials').

Print and microfiche holdings at IALS Library
IALS holds the Official Journal from 1952 to 2013 (except the S series) :-

*Online only January 2014 onwards

The EU's primary legislation consists of the treaties setting out the structure and functions of the EU, together with certain other fundamental treaties agreed between the member states. All are on EUR-Lex, in both original and consolidated versions, including the 1950s texts which pre-date the Official Journal. For further information, see 'Sources of the treaties', below.

The founding treaties

• Treaty Establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), Paris,18 April 1951; in force 23 July 1952, expired 2002 (art. 97).

• Treaty Establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), Rome, 25 March 1957; in force 1 January 1958.

• Treaty Establishing the European Economic Community (EEC), Rome, 25 March 1957; in force 1 January 1958; known as 'the Treaty of Rome'; its title has changed twice over the years:

   - renamed Treaty Establishing the European Community (EC Treaty, or TEC) from 1 November 1993

   - renamed Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) from 1 December 2009.

The articles of the Treaty of Rome/TEC/TFEU have been renumbered twice, by the Treaty of Amsterdam, then the Treaty of Lisbon; article-number conversion tables are annexed to the Amsterdam and Lisbon treaties.

• Treaty on European Union (Maastricht Treaty), signed 7 February 1992, in force 1 November 1993; known as 'the EU Treaty', or 'TEU'; the articles were renumbered by the Treaties of Amsterdam and Lisbon (again, conversion tables are included in the annexes to these treaties).

For further information, see summaries of legislation on institutional affairs, on EUR-Lex. 

Other treaties
Other EU primary legislation includes the Charter of Fundamental Rights, accession treaties admitting new member states, and reform treaties such as the Single European Act (1986), Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) and Treaty of Lisbon (2007).

Sources of the Treaties
Original texts
EUR-Lex has original versions of primary legislation from the ECSC Treaty (1951) onwards (but the original ECSC and EEC Treaties are not in English - see below for English versions).

Other sources of the original texts include:

Official Journal print edition: primary legislation was published in the OJ from the 1960s onwards (digitised versions of the print edition are on EUR-Lex - see above)

UN Treaty Series: English translations of the 1950s founding treaties were published in the UNTS, which is available online (see FLARE Index to Treaties for UNTS citations). In the UNTS, the ECSC Treaty has the title Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany...instituting the European Coal and Steel Community.

Subscription databases: English versions of the original treaty texts (1951 onwards) are also on Westlaw UK and Lexis+ UK, but, on both, each article of each treaty appears as a separate item; the EUR-Lex versions are more user-friendly.

Consolidated versions
Official Journal C series: consolidated versions of the key treaties, such as the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, are published periodically in OJ C, which is on EUR-Lex, Lexis and Westlaw.

Monograph editions: consolidated versions of the key treaties have in the past been issued as books by the EU Publications Office, under titles such as European Union: selected instruments taken from the treaties and Consolidated versions of the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty establishing the European Community; IALS Library has many of these compilations. 

Other sources include Blackstone's EU treaties & legislation, published by Oxford University Press, and the looseleaf commentary, Smit & Herzog on the law of the European Union (LexisNexis Matthew Bender, 2005-). Both titles are held at IALS, but our Smit & Herzog is no longer updated.

The main types of secondary legislation (also known as 'legal acts') are directives, regulations and decisions. 

Depending on the procedure used to pass a particular legal act, it is classed either as a 'legislative act' or a 'non-legislative' act. Non-legislative acts include delegated or implementing legislation made by the European Commission under the authority of a legislative act.

For more information about types of EU secondary legislation: see the European Commission's ABC of EU Law; see also the EUR-Lex Glossary, under European Union (EU) hierarchy of norms, EU legal instruments, Delegated acts and Implementing acts.

Reference numbers
Each legal act has a reference consisting of the year and a serial number, for example:

• Council Directive 1999/31/EC of 26 April 1999 on the landfill of waste
   
• Regulation (EC) no. 6/2002...on Community designs; or Regulation (EU) 2015/848*...on insolvency proceedings 
   
• Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2030* of 29 November 2019 granting a Union authorisation for the biocidal product family ‘Pal IPA Product Family’
   
• Decision 2019/1798 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 October 2019 appointing the European Chief Prosecutor of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office

*Since January 2015, regulation references have put the year first, to match directive and decision references.

Each legal act also has reference called a 'European Legislation Identifier' (ELI) - see EUR-Lex Help. 

Printed sources of secondary legislation
Until 1 July 2013, the print edition of the OJ L was the authentic source of secondary legislation, but from 1 July 2013 onwards the authentic source is the online edition, on EUR-Lex. The printed OJ ceased publication in 2014. 

IALS holds a complete run of the printed Official Journal. It also has the English Special Edition, a compilation of secondary legislation in force when the UK and Ireland joined the European Communities in 1973, translated into English.

Online sources 
All secondary legislation is on EUR-Lex, including the original Official Journal version and consolidated versions incorporating amendments. However, the latest consolidation is not always up-to-date - to check:

• find the directive/regulation/decision on EUR-Lex;

• on the search results page, note the date of the latest consolidation (if any), then click on the title to open the full record;

• open the Document Information tab, scroll to 'Modified by' and check for amendments since the date of the latest consolidation. 

EU secondary legislation is also on Westlaw UK.

Legislative procedure
Legislative acts are passed by the European Parliament and Council of the European Union, using the ordinary legislative procedure or special legislative procedures. 

Implementing acts are made by the Commission with the help of committees, in a procedure known as 'comitology' (see 'Comitology' in EUR-Lex Glossary). 

Delegated acts follow different procedures: see Commission FAQs on delegated legislation. For more information, see Paul Craig and Gráinne de Búrca, EU Law: Text, Cases, and Materials (8th edn, OUP 2024), chapter 5.

Tracking the progress of legislation
To monitor legislative activity, see:

• Legislative Observatory, a European Parliament resource which covers the progress of both legislative and non-legislative acts;
   
• Lawmaking Procedures, successor to the Commission's PreLex database, which covers legislative acts (for the most part); each record has a link to its equivalent in the Legislative Observatory; 
   
• EU Law Tracker, a new legislative procedure database developed jointly by the Commission, Council of the EU and European Parliament.
   
• Register of Delegated and Implementing Acts, a Commission database showing the progress of delegated and implementing acts;
   
• Comitology Register, a Commission database providing information about the progress of implementing acts;
  
  
• Legislative Train Schedule, a tool created by the European Parliamentary Research Service; has links to further reading on each proposal.

Transposition of directives
Directives are an indirect form of legislation: each member state has to transpose them in its own law. This used to be called 'implementation'. Before Brexit, the UK usually transposed directives by means of statutory instruments, although occasionally an act of Parliament was required. 

The original (OJ) text of each directive on EUR-Lex and Westlaw UK comes with details of transposing legislation for every member state: on EUR-Lex, see 'National Transposition'; on Westlaw, see 'Document details' -'National measures'. Lexis covers transposition for England and Wales only in Halsbury's EU Legislation Implementator.

Other sources of transposition details include:

• Commercial Laws of Europe: a Sweet and Maxwell publication which reproduces selected laws of EU member states, in translation, with an emphasis on laws transposing EU directives; held at IALS Library;

• European Current Law: another Sweet and Maxwell title; lists transposing legislation for all member states; held at IALS to 2019 only (incomplete);
   
• government websites: details of forthcoming or very recent transposition may be available on the website of the government departments responsible in each member state;
   
• N-Lex: this EU search facility covers the national legislation websites of all member states and has a multi-lingual thesaurus for the translation of search terms.

All EU cases are available on Curia, the website of the Court of Justice of the European Union, and on EUR-Lex, the EU's main law site. They are also on subscription databases and in various commercially-published law reports. 

Almost all Court of Justice cases used to have two stages: first the advocate general’s opinion, then the judgment (usually a few months later). However, in recent years many cases have not had an opinion stage. General Court / Court of First Instance cases only have one stage, the judgment (with a few exceptions, for example case T-51/89).  

The EU courts
The Court of Justice, established in 1952, is the oldest EU judicial institution. It is often known as the 'European Court of Justice' (ECJ), but this is not its formal title. It is not to be confused with the European Court of Human Rights, which does not belong to the EU.

The EU created another court in 1988, the Court of First Instance (CFI), to help with a backlog of cases at the Court of Justice. Its name was changed to 'General Court' in late 2009.

The Civil Service Tribunal (CST) was established in 2004 to deal with cases involving the staff of EU institutions. It closed in September 2016 and the General Court now deals with staff cases.

Case numbers
When an EU case is first registered it is given a reference in the following format:-

• C-14/89    (Cour de justice / Court of Justice)
• T-220/95    (Tribunal de première instance / Court of First Instance, now ‘General Court’)
• F-14/06    (Tribunal de la fonction publique / Civil Service Tribunal)

Until the creation of the CFI, case numbers took the form number/year, for example 290/84, and there was no alphabetic prefix.

Curia has numerical lists of all registered cases.

The European Case Law Identifier (ECLI)
The ECLI is a uniform resource identifier for online cases. ECLIs have been assigned to all EU cases, right back to 1954, for example example, EU:T:2024:273. The EU now cites its cases with ECLIs instead of law report references. For more information, see the European e-Justice Portal or the Curia website.

Printed sources of EU cases
The official printed series of EU law reports, which has now ceased publication, was Reports of Cases Before the Court of Justice and the General Court. It published cases decided from 1954 to 2011, then it was replaced by an authenticated digital-only edition. 

Originally called Reports of Cases Before the Court of Justice of the European Coal and Steel Community, it became Reports of Cases Before the Court, then Reports of Cases before the Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance, then Reports of Cases Before the Court of Justice and the General Court. In the UK it is usually known as the 'European Court Reports' (ECR), but this is not its official name.

After the creation of the Court of First Instance (now called the General Court) in 1988, Reports of Cases was divided into two sections: Section I published Court of Justice cases and Section II published CFI/General Court cases. An ECR citation looks like this: 

    [1991] ECR II-469        (ECR for 1991, part II, starting at page 469)

A sub-series of the ECR, European Court Reports: Reports of European Community Staff Cases (ECR-SC), published cases concerning employees of EU institutions decided from1994 to 2009. ECR-SC has ceased publication; staff cases decided from 2010 onwards appear in the main Reports of Cases series.

Reports of Cases used to publish every case in full, in contrast to the UK's selective law reporting practice. Since 2004, however, it has only published brief details of less important cases; the full reports can be found on Curia and EUR-Lex.

IALS Library holds the entire English edition of Reports of Cases (and ECR-SC from 1994 to 2006). IALS also has the French edition from 1954 to 2003; the German edition1954 to 1991; the Dutch edition 1954 to 1964; and the Italian edition 1954 to 1964.

Case summaries and court notices are published in the C series of the Official Journal of the European Union (now online-only).

Selected EU cases appear in UK publications such as Common Market Law Reports, European Commercial Cases, European Community Cases, All England Law Reports: European Cases (ceased publication in December 2015), Weekly Law Reports and All England Law Reports. IALS Library holds all these titles.    

Online sources of EU cases
Curia has a database of all EU cases, with links to the authenticated reports published in the online-only Reports of Cases, as well as citations to commentary, and other information. Curia also provides numerical lists of all registered cases, with details of pending and dropped cases, cross-references to joined cases and appeals, and links to opinions, judgments and other documents. 

EUR-Lex also has all EU cases, including the authenticated digital Reports of Cases. Each case record on EUR-Lex includes a 'Document information' tab with further details, such as law report citations and citations to commentary in journals (under 'Doctrine').

EU cases are also on Westlaw and Lexis, but Lexis omits judgments that are not available in English.

European Union competition cases, such as antitrust investigations and merger scrutinies, are usually dealt with by the European Commission or national competition authorities, but some cases are heard by EU or national courts.

The main source of information about EU competition policy is the European Commission's Competition Policy website, which provides a case database (with links to press releases and the Official Journal, et cetera), legislation, rules, guidelines and the annual Report on Competition Policy. 

Other sources:

• The Official Journal: the C series publishes competition notices, including announcements of new cases, merger clearance notices and opinions of the advisory committees; the L series publishes some types of competition decision by the Commission. 
   
• Westlaw UK and Lexis+ UK: both databases include have competition decisions and competition notices that were published in the Official Journal and competition cases heard by the Court of Justice and General Court/CFI; Westlaw UK also has the Antitrust supplement to the Common Market Law Reports.
   
• The Antitrust supplement to Sweet and Maxwell's Common Market Law Reports reproduces Commission decisions, court decisions, notices and other documents. It is held at IALS in hard copy and also available on Westlaw UK.
   
• The Report on Competition Policy, published annually by the European Commission, is a survey of each year’s competition activities, 1971 onwards. Recent issues are on the EU's Competition website. Older issues are available online from the Publications Office, but they are easier to find in the Archive of European Integration, which has them from 1971 to 2019. IALS Library holds the printed reports from 1971 to 2008.

• The annual General Report on the Activities of the European Communities published competition information from 1952 to 1970 (before the Report on Competition Policy started). All issues are on the Publications Office website.
  

Information about national competition authorities
The European Competition Network coordinates enforcement of EC competition rules by the member states’ national competition authorities and the European Commission. It provides background information on competition regimes, publications and links to the websites of the national competition authorities.

COM documents, usually called 'COM docs', are a series of official publications produced by the European Commission for the attention of other EU institutions, such as the Council of the EU, or the European Parliament. They have reference numbers prefixed 'COM' ('Commission'), for example, COM (2000) 529. Numerous different types of material are published as COM docs, including proposals for legislation, consultation papers and reports on the implementation of policy. Printed COM docs ceased publication in April 2003.

Online sources
COM documents are on EUR-Lex under 'Preparatory Documents' from 1960 onwards.

The Archive of European Integration, provided by the University of Pittsburgh, includes many COM documents.

Westlaw UK has COM documents from around the mid-1990s onwards, under 'Preparatory Acts'.

Lexis+ UK has COM documents from around the mid-1990s onwards, under 'EU Materials'.

Printed sources
IALS holds some printed COM documents of legal interest: see Library Search. Each COM doc has its own catalogue record; most have the classmark RES FOL GO1.A1.J.45.

As well as being published individually by the EU, COM documents were reproduced in the Official Journal C Series until 2003. The OJ C versions of proposals for legislation (a type of COM doc) do not include the explanatory memoranda found in the individual COM doc versions.

The EU makes international agreements with external countries and with other international organisations, for example: 'Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Azerbaijan on the facilitation of the issuance of visas', OJ L 128, 30.4.2014, p. 49–60. EU member states also make international agreements among themselves.

Online sources
EU international agreements are published in the L series of the Official Journal and are available on EUR-Lex and Westlaw. 

Status information about EU international agreements can be found in the Treaties and Agreements Database provided by the Council of the EU's Treaty Office. The database covers all agreements since 1989, plus older agreements that are still in force and some important old agreements which are no longer in force. It also includes the Treaties, the EU's primary legislation.

Print sources
 EU international agreements are published in the Official Journal L series, which was published in hard copy from the 1950s until the end of 2013 and is now an online-only title. The entire Official Journal is on EUR-Lex (see above).

IALS Library has a large collection of books on many different aspects of EU law, print and electronic: see Library Search. Most of the recent print titles are in the fourth floor reading room, at classmark GO1.A1.

Introductory works include:

• Craig, Paul, and de Búrca, Gráinne, EU Law: Text, Cases, and Materials  (8th edn, OUP 2024) 

• Steiner, J., Steiner & Woods: EU Law (15th edn, OUP 2023) 

• Foster, Nigel G., Foster on EU Law (8th edn, OUP 2021)

• Schütze, Robert, and Tridimas, Takis (ed.s), Oxford Principles of European Union Law. Volume 1, The European Union Legal Order (OUP 2018)

The following are some of the journals in IALS Library which are specifically focused on EU or European law. Almost all of them are available online as well as in hard copy, via links on Library Search.

Columbia Journal of European Law

Common Market Law Review

Europarecht               

European Business Law Review            

European Intellectual Property Review

European Law Review

European Public Law 

Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law

Revue trimestrielle de droit européen

To find journal articles on a specific topic, use the 'Articles' option on Library Search. Alternatively, try the following sources individually:

• Westlaw UK's Journals collection.

• FinD-Er, the online catalogue of the European Commission Libraries, which indexes journal articles on EU matters (full-text links only work for Commission staff). Use Advanced Search and change 'All Types' to 'Articles'.

• Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals: a multi-lingual database indexing journals from non-common law jurisdictions and journals on international and comparative law. IFLP is part of HeinOnline and it gives links to full-text articles if they are on HeinOnline.

• The World Journals and Law Reviews collection on Westlaw International Materials.

• Index to Legal Periodicals and Books: covers journals published in the US and elsewhere (US academics do write about EU law).

• Treaties and Agreements Database (Council of the EU): all EU treaties and international agreements since 1989, older agreements if still in force, important old agreements which are no longer in force, ratification and other status information.
• Archive of European Integration (University of Pittsburgh): EU green papers and white papers, reports by EU institutions, academic articles/papers and more.
• Competition policy (European Commission): full details of individual competition cases, Report on Competition Policy.

• Council of the European Union: press releases, meeting records, register of internal documents, EU law tracker.

• Curia (Court of Justice of the EU): case database, numerical case indexes, authenticated digital Reports of Cases, the Statute of the Court of Justice, procedural rules, annual reports, hearing schedules and news.

• EUR-Lex, the EU's law database: the Official Journal; primary and secondary legislation; cases; COM documents; international agreements; EFTA documents; details of the progress of EU legislation (under 'Lawmaking Procedures'); summaries of legislation by subject. 

• European Commission:  policy information; the Comitology Register (information about the work of committees involved in the implementation of EU legislation); the Register of Delegated and Implementing Acts; a register of internal documents; news; information for the public.

• European Parliament (EP): minutes, the Verbatim Report of Proceedings, texts adopted by the EP, parliamentary questions; press releases; the Legislative Observatory, which monitors the progress of legislation; Legislative Train (policy &legislation tracker);  a register of internal documents; EP Think Tank (reports, briefings and studies produced by the European Parliamentary Research Service).

• European Sources Online (Cardiff University Library Service): gateway site bringing together information and links on all matters relating to Europe, including the EU.

• Legislative Observatory, or 'OEIL': a European Parliament database tracking the progress of legislative proposals, with links to legislative documents.

• N-Lex: multi-lingual interface and thesaurus which can be used to search the national legislation websites of the EU member states. 

• News and Events: press releases from all the EU institutions/agencies and details of events. 

• ​Tenders Electronic Daily (TED): platform for EU public procurement notices (also known as the supplement to the Official Journal, or 'OJ S').