WRITTEN QUESTION E-2800/99

by Ingo Friedrich (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(18 January 2000)

Subject: Commercial publication of the European Official Journal

The Commission publishes the Official Journal of the European Union in electronic form in the EUR-Lex archive. With this archive the Commission enables access to be gained to the Official Journal free of charge as part of its commitment to closeness to the citizen and transparency. However, such access is free of charge for only 45 days from the date of publication.

1. Can it be in the Commission's interests to publish legal documents of relevance to the public on a commercial server more than 45 days after the date of publication?

2. The public cannot understand why a relatively high price is charged for European legislation and communications. It costs EUR 8,40, for example, to obtain 28 pages on the commercial server EUDOR. How can so large a financial contribution from the public be justified?

3. How does the Commission believe the Official Journal might be made available free of charge or at a lower price by electronic means for a longer period?

Answer given by Ms Reding on behalf of the Commission

(24 March 2000)

In his question, the Honourable Member refers to the Official Journal of the European Communities (OJ) as if it were published by the Commission alone. The Commission would point out that decisions relating to the procedures for publishing the OJ are taken by the Management Committee of the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities (EUR-OP), which is composed of representatives of the European Parliament, Council, Commission, Court of Justice, Court of Auditors, Economic and Social Committee and Committee of the Regions. The Management Committee unanimously sets the general policy guidelines for the sale and free dissemination of publications by the European institutions, including the electronic version of the Official Journal to which the Honourable Member refers.

The commercial factors which the institutions take into account when making the OJ available to the public are primarily based on the following considerations:

(a) Legislative texts imposing a legal obligation are made available to the public free of charge. The end-user pays only for the medium on which they are distributed (Internet, CD-ROM, paper).

(b) Products and services which add value to the basic documents usually have to be paid for. The value added of a given product or service can take different forms, such as the compilation of sophisticated databases and provision of detailed and powerful search functions and subject indexes. The value

added can also be provided by intermediaries working on behalf of the Publications Office, such as staff in the document delivery service who locate and supply the documents.

1. All the legislation in force may be accessed free of charge and at any time by any member of the public in the Legislation section of EUR-Lex. However, a charge is made for access to archives containing the texts of older Official Journals in TIFF format (over 10 million pages) after they have been made available free for 45 days. The income generated by these archives ensures that the document-delivery network is kept easily accessible to the public even to those people who do not have Internet access and contributes to financing the costs of producing, managing and maintaining the archives themselves.

2. See point 1. The prices for accessing these databases are entirely comparable to those applicable in similar systems in the Member States.

3. Since 1998, members of the public have been able to obtain all the language versions of the L and C editions of the Official Journal (the C edition has been available since 31 August 1999) for a given year (some 500 000 pages) on CD-ROM at a price of EUR 144. The L and C editions of the Official Journal are made available in EUR-Lex for 45 days after publication in order to cover the time required for distributing the monthly CD-ROM.

Each year, the EUR-OP Management Committee reviews the pricing policy for all the publication formats of the Official Journal.