What is the Official Journal (OJ)?

It is the official journal of record of the European Union. It has several sub-series, of which the most important are L, C and S.

	Official Journal L contains the text of adopted legislation and details of international agreements, conventions etc entering into force. Within the L series there are two sections: Acts whose publication is obligatory (includes Regulations) and Acts whose publication is not obligatory (includes Directives)
	Official Journal C contains brief details of European Court of Justice (ECJ) and Court of First Instance (CFI) actions and judgments; draft legislation; notices from the European Commission and European Parliament minutes. It does not contain opinions of the Advocates-General
	Official Journal S contains invitations to tender for public contracts. This ceased to be available as a print version at the end of 1996 and is now available at http://ted.europa.eu

The OJ is published daily. Each issue is numbered and each series has its own numbering sequence which starts anew each year. You need the year, the series and the issue number to find a particular piece of information

Free web sources

EUR-Lex - http://eur-lex.europa.eu/JOIndex.do - online editions of the Official Journal from 1998 onwards, listed in date and issue number order. The texts published in the Official Journal between 1952  and 1998 can also be accessed using the site's search functions

Subscription-based databases

	Justis EU
	Lawtel EU
	Lexis
	Westlaw UK

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