en.europa-eu-audience

Your opinion about N-Lex, a survey

See https://e-justice.europa.eu/newsManagement.do?idNews=49&action=show&plang=en&init=true

Introduction of the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI)

Council conclusions inviting the introduction of the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) and a minimum set of uniform metadata for case law

Source: Official Journal  of the European Union, C127, 29 april 2011 (noted by Stephane Cottin)

Download C_12720110429en

About Legal Information Institutes

Source:

http://legalinformatics.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/new-on-voxpopulii-moncion-on-new-research-about-legal-information-institutes/

extract: 

Isabelle Moncion of the Chair in Legal Information of the University of Montreal, and Lexum, has posted Building Sustainable LIIs – or Free Access to Law as Seen Through the Eyes of a Newbie, on the VoxPopuLII Blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School.

The EU’s Official Journal is going fully digital

The EU’s Official Journal is going fully digital

The European Commission today proposed giving the electronic edition of the European Union’s Official Journal legal status. At the moment, only the printed edition is legally valid. With this proposal, EU citizens and businesses across Europe will have more legal certainty and save time and money. The proposal follows a trend at national level where all EU countries have electronic official journals, more than half of which have full legal status. The proposal needs unanimous support from the Council and consent of the European Parliament before it takes effect.

"This proposal provides for simple, easy and reliable access to EU law online. In times of crisis, I warmly welcome this move to make life easier and less expensive for businesses and citizens," Vice-President Viviane Reding, the EU's Justice Commissioner, who is in charge of relations with the Publications Office, said.

The Official Journal (OJ) was created in 1952 for the then European Coal and Steel Community. It is how the EU keeps its records: only legal acts published in the Official Journal are binding. Currently, and despite the fact that a majority of European citizens and businesses mainly consult the online version, only the paper version of the Official Journal is legally valid. What this means is that no decision taken by the Commission can be enforced based on the electronic version. If citizens want to claim a right based on what is published in the Official Journal (such as the EU Treaties) they currently need to obtain – at cost – a copy of the print version. The Commission proposes to change this by giving legal status to the electronic edition of the Official Journal. The proposal thus broadens access and ensures that citizens’ right to make themselves acquainted with EU law is enforced.

The proposal will not only benefit businesses and professionals in the field of law, but will also serve citizens who want to be informed from a reliable source about the rights they benefit from under EU law.

Currently, consultation of the paper version of the Official Journal costs about €1,000 a year per subscription. The Commission is proposing to give free and direct access to the legally valid Official Journal online, making everyone's lives a little easier. Legal acts passed by the EU will be instantly accessible to all. At the same time, electronic publication will ease the search of data, by minimising the time and effort citizens' need to put into searching for information.

The proposal needs to be approved unanimously by the Council after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

This proposal is part of the Commission's ongoing efforts to provide a one-stop-shop for access to EU law through the enhanced EUR-Lex portal that will be launched in the beginning of 2012.

Further Information

More information on the Official Journal of the European Union:

http://publications.europa.eu/official/index_en.htm

Homepage of Vice-President Viviane Reding, EU Justice Commissioner:

http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/reding/index_en.htm

 

EU citizens and European law – Introduction by Alain Lamassoure MEP

One of the better moves of the French president Nicolas Sarkozy ahead of France’s presidency of the Council of the European Union was to ask Alain Lamassoure MEP to make some practical proposals for improving the effective application of Community law for ordinary people.

The report is dated 8 June 2008, and Lamassoure handed it over to Sarkozy 27 June 2008, just a few days before the beginning of the six month French Council presidency.

The English web page of the European Commission’s Directorate-General Justice recently linked only to the French original, so I decided to look for other language versions in order to make the report accessible to a greater number of people.

Despite time wasted on some inconclusive searches, we only have to go Lamassoure’s own web page to find the report in French, German and English. If there are translations into other languages, someone could be kind enough to indicate where they can be found. However, here are the direct links to the three language versions:

Alain LAMASSOURE, Député européen: LE CITOYEN ET L’APPLICATION DU DROIT COMMUNAUTAIRE Rapport au Président de la République (8 juin 2008 ; 188 pages)

Alain LAMASSOURE, Mitglied des Europäischen Parlaments: DER BÜRGER UND DIE ANWENDUNG DES GEMEINSCHAFTSRECHTS Bericht an den Staatspräsidenten( 8. Juni 2008)

Alain LAMASSOURE, Member of the European Parliament: THE CITIZEN AND THE APPLICATION OF COMMUNITY LAW Report to the President of the Republic (8th June 2008)

Read more on the source (dated 5-11-2010) 

Legislation.gov.uk and EUR-Lex

Some good ideas for the next EUR-Lex

Source: 

http://blog.law.cornell.edu/voxpop/2010/08/15/legislationgovuk/

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/

The launch of legislation.gov.uk by The [UK] National Archives marks a step change in public access to a primary source of legal information for citizens in the UK. Legislation.gov.uk is extensive, covering the four jurisdictions that make up the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and over 800 years of history.

 

 

 

We had two objectives with legislation.gov.uk: to deliver a high quality public service for people who need to consult, cite, and use legislation on the Web; and to expose the UK’s Statute Book as data, for people to take, use, and re-use for whatever purpose or application they wish. In particular, our aim was to show how the statute book can contribute to the growing Web of data as well as to the Web of documents.

 

New RTI Legislation Rating Methodology Launched

29 September 2010: A new tool for evaluating and comparing national right to information frameworks was launched today by Access Info Europe (Madrid, Spain) and the Centre for Law and Democracy (Halifax, Canada) as part of activities to mark the week of International Right to Know Day (28 September).

The Right to Information (RTI) Legislation Rating Methodology is a tool to assess the overall legal framework for the right to information, based on how well that framework gives effect to the right to access information held by public authorities.

The seven key elements of the right of access to information are: the Right of Access, Scope, Requesting Procedures, Exceptions and Refusals, Appeals, Sanctions and Protections, and Promotional Measures. They are weighted as follows out of a possible total of 150 points based on 61 Indicators.

An Advisory Council of renowned experts on the right to information has been advising CLD and Access Info Europe on the development of the Indicators, available here.

This Methodology will provide a detailed comparative ranking of the world’s over 80 access to information regimes,” said Helen Darbishire of Access Info Europe. “This is essential for gaining a deeper understanding of the right to information and promoting compliance with common minimum standards.”

Toby Mendel of the Centre for Law and Democracy added: “By breaking down the rating into seven different thematic areas, this Methodology provides a detailed assessment of specific strengths and weaknesses. This is an invaluable tool for civil society groups promoting RTI law reform.”

The seven key elements of the right of access to information are: the Right of Access, Scope, Requesting Procedures, Exceptions and Refusals, Appeals, Sanctions and Protections, and Promotional Measures. They are weighted as follows out of a possible total of 150 points based on 61 Indicators

The 61 Indicators are drawn from a wide range of international standards on the right to information, as well as comparative study of numerous right to information laws from around the world and pilot testing of the Methodology on selected laws.

An Advisory Council of renowned experts on the right to information has been advising CLD and Access Info Europe on the development of the Indicators.

 

UK redevelops legislative database to support and encourage reuse

Version française

Aug 18, 2010-08-23

Source : http://egovau.blogspot.com/2010/08/uk-redevelops-legislative-database-to.html

 

A good idea also for EUR-Lex at EU level

 

Brought to my attention by Mia Garlick via Twitter, the UK has redeveloped its legislative database with a focus on reuse by external parties.

The recently released site legislation.gov.uk covers 800 years of legislation from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

According to an article from Cornell University Law School, Legislation.gov.uk, John Sheridan, Head of e-Services and Strategy at The National Archives says that the site was designed to meet two objectives,

to deliver a high quality public service for people who need to consult, cite, and use legislation on the Web; and to expose the UK’s Statute Book as data, for people to take, use, and re-use for whatever purpose or application they wish.

 

The Crown Copyright for the site specifies that,

You are encouraged to use and re-use the information that is available on this site freely and flexibly, with only a few conditions.

This type of approach makes legislation vastly more accessible to the public and, through an API provided by the site, supports the development of applications and services that assist the public, organisations and lawyers to understand and apply the law.

More information on why and how the site was designed is available in the article referenced above.

Australia isn't yet at the same point. Our legislation, detailed at Comlaw, is not yet supported through APIs or other machine-readable data formats and is covered under a more restrictive licensing regime,

This work is copyright. You may download, display, print and reproduce this material in unaltered form only (retaining this notice) for your personal, non-commercial use or use within your organisation. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, all other rights are reserved.

The European e-Justice Portal is now online

Version française

 

14/07/2010

EN https://e-justice.europa.eu/home.do?&action=home&lang=en

FR https://e-justice.europa.eu/home.do?&action=home&lang=fr

New Publication of Consolidated Treaties

Source: http://eulaw.typepad.com/eulawblog/2010/03/new-publication-of-consolidated-treaties.html

There's a new publication of the consolidated version of the Treaties in the OJ, 2010 C 83, p. 1.

You can download the complete version here.

Here's the link to the full collection which includes the Treaty on the European Union, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the Protocols, Annexes,and Declarations. There's also the all important and useful Table of Equivalences showing the correspondence between the old and new article numbering.

This publication also includes the Charter of Fundamental Rights which now has legal force.

And there's a consolidated version of the European Atomic Energy Community Treaty in the OJ 2010 C 84, p. 1.