The ''Official Journal of the European Union'' (the ''OJEU'') is the official gazette of record for the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

(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.

History

It was first published on 30 December 1952 as the ''Official Journal of the

European Coal and Steel Community The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was a European organization created after World War II to integrate Europe's coal and steel industries into a single common market based on the principle of supranationalism which would be governe ...

'', 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. Since 1998, the journal has been available online via the

EUR-Lex EUR-Lex is the official online database of European Union law and other public documents of the European Union (EU), published in 24 official Languages of the European Union, languages of the EU. The Official Journal of the European Union, Offici ...

service. 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. From this date, the printed version has lost its legal value. Each issue is published as a set of documents in

PDF/A PDF/A is an International Organization for Standardization, ISO-standardized version of the Portable Document Format (PDF) specialized for use in the archive, archiving and long-term digital preservation, preservation of electronic documents. PDF ...

format (one per official language) plus one

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

document ensuring the overall coherency through hashes and a ''qualified electronic signature'' (a kind of digital signature defined in

European law European Union law is a system of Supranational union, supranational Law, laws operating within the 27 member states of the European Union (EU). It has grown over time since the 1952 founding of the European Coal and Steel Community, to promote ...

) extended with a trusted time stamp. On 1 October 2023, the Official Journal switched to act-by-act publication. In this new production mode, the Official Journal is no longer a collation of acts with a table of contents. Instead, each act is published individually as an authentic Official Journal in PDF format.

Publication

The journal comprises three series: * The L series (= Legislation) contains EU legislation including

regulations Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. Fo ...

, directives, decisions, recommendations, and opinions. * The C series (= Courts) contains reports and announcements, including the

judgment Judgement (or judgment) is the evaluation of given circumstances to make a decision. Judgement is also the ability to make considered decisions. In an informal context, a judgement is opinion expressed as fact. In the context of a legal trial ...

s of the

European Court of Justice The European Court of Justice (ECJ), officially the Court of Justice (), is the supreme court of the European Union in matters of European Union law. As a part of the Court of Justice of the European Union, it is tasked with interpreting ...

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 The European Development Fund (EDF) was the main instrument for European Union (EU) aid for development cooperation in Africa, the Caribbean, and Pacific ( ACP Group) countries and the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT). Funding was provi ...

and other agencies.

References

External links

Online version of the ''Official Journal''

Online version of the ''OJEU Supplement'' ("Tenders Electronic Daily")

{{Authority control European Union law Daily newspapers published in Luxembourg Government gazettes Government publications Multilingual journals Newspapers established in 1952

History

Publication

See also

References

External links