Summaries of EU legislation : a compass to EU law ; Consolidation : tracking the evolution of legal acts.
Date: 2016-07-29
Institutions: Publications Office of the European Union
Subjects: EU law, EU law - national law, access to EU information, legislation, on line data service

Consolidation 
Tracking the 
evolution  
of legal acts

Summaries  
of EU Legislation 
A compass  
to EU law

Are you looking for a place where EU law is explained and ‘translated’ 
into reader-friendly language, with answers to basic questions, 
such as ‘What does this regulation do?’ or ‘When did this regulation 
come into force?’. The answer is Summaries of EU Legislation, 
which are available on EUR-Lex, the official gateway to EU law 
(http://eur-lex.europa.eu/browse/summaries.html).

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Summaries of EU Legislation are addressed to a general, non-
specialised audience, so the texts are drafted in concise and jargon-
free language. 

They are a very useful tool for citizens to get information on EU legal 
acts in a quick and easy way. Whether you are an entrepreneur who 
needs to know about applicable EU law for your business, or a student 
writing a dissertation on EU legal provisions in a particular field,  the 
summaries always provide an excellent entry point to the topics and 
EU legal acts you are interested in.

Currently the summaries cover 32 topics, which correspond to 
the activity areas of the European Union. The chapters include 
‘Environment and climate change’, ‘Food safety’, ‘Competition’, 
‘Human rights’, ‘Budget’, and many others.

The main Summaries of EU Legislation page on EUR-Lex 
(http://eur-lex.europa.eu/browse/summaries.html) gives an overview 
of the recently published summaries and allows you to launch a quick 
or advanced search based on keywords, topics, linked documents, etc. 
Another possibility is to search through a glossary of terms or browse 
the summaries by topics or their sublevels. You can also look for the 
summaries on the EUR-Lex website right next to the legal acts: if a 
summary exists for the legal act you are interested in, the page will 
contain a special tab called Summary of legislation. 

At present over 2 500 summaries are available (plus about 
1 600 archived ones), and each month around 40 summaries are added 
or revised. To stay up-to date on the latest additions and changes, 
users can follow #EUlawLite on four major social media platforms 
(Twitter @EURLex, and the pages of the Publications Office of the 
European Union on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+).

So, if you need a quick explanation of an EU legal act, look no further 
and check out Summaries of EU Legislation first.

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Summaries  
of EU Legislation  
A compass  
to EU law

Consolidation 
Tracking the 
evolution  
of legal acts

EU legal acts can change in time as a result of successive amendments 
and corrigenda. With many such layers, it may become difficult to find 
the provisions that are currently in force.

This is why the EU legal acts are consolidated – presented together, 
to make the evolution easier to follow. Consolidation means that the 
successive amendments and corrigenda are incorporated into the 
legal act. In other words, several legal texts published in different 
issues of the Official Journal of the European Union are combined as a 
‘consolidated family’ in one easy-to-read document. 

Consolidation is done in layers, showing the integration of new 
modifications into the text resulting from the previous stage. Each layer 
shows a ‘snapshot’ or a historical account of the EU law currently in force, 
until it is changed by the next amending act.

What is being consolidated?
 ★international agreements; 
 ★secondary legislation; 
 ★complementary legislation.

What is not being consolidated?
 ★acts with a short period of validity (for example acts concerning 

the Common Agricultural Policy);

 ★acts that have never been translated/published;
 ★minor corrigenda in one/a few languages.

Currently (2016) more than 4 300 consolidated versions of the legal acts 
currently in force are available, which combine almost 18 000 documents. 
They are published in the 23 official languages of the EU. The effort 
required is substantial, with more than 2 million pages of consolidated 
documents added in 2015.

All consolidated legislation can be found on EUR-Lex – the latest 
consolidated version is directly available in the search result for the act 
that has been consolidated. All consolidated layers can be found in the 
tab ‘Linked documents’ in the notice of the act. 

It is important to remember that consolidated texts have no legal effect. 
They are intended for use as documentation tools and the EU institutions 
do not assume any liability for their content. For legal purposes, 
only the texts published in the Official Journal of the European Union are 
valid and binding. 

Consolidation and publication of the resulting documents is a 
responsibility of the Publications Office of the European Union and 
the overarching goal of this project is to ensure easier access to EU law, 
thereby increasing the transparency of EU law-making.