Europa, the EU web site, provides access to a de facto official depository of legal texts and documentation about the EU, although only electronic editions of the OJ (e-OJ) published after 1 July 2013 are authentic (have legal force). Within the vast and complex arrangement of web sites that comprise Europa, one of the best ways to search for legislative information is by topic.
Eur-Lex is the search engine for finding all forms of EU legislation. You can search in several different ways.
One way is to search the various Collections, i.e., Treaties, Legislation, and Consolidated Legislation (all listed under the heading, "EU Law and Related Documents"). These collections provide access to documents via title/text keyword or by a numerically arranged hierarchy of subjects. Under each decimal heading, documents are arranged by date, so it helps to know the approximate date of the document(s) you are searching for.
Another method is to search by Official Journal citation.
Eur-Lex entries provide a wealth of information for each document, as well as the full text from the OJ. and links to related documents. For example, several screen shots of the 2009 Directive on Conservation of Wild Birds are illustrated below (located by linking to Legislation under the EU Law and Related Documents tab, and then conducting an Advanced Search of the title field for the phrase "wild birds"). For annotated versions of the images, click them.
When you click on the desired document, you get the following screen:
When you click on Summary of Legislation you retrieve a brief description of the legislation:
When you click on Procedure, you get a legislative history with links to important documents:
When you click on Linked Documents you get links to a variety of relevant documents, including: legal texts serving as the basis of the legislation, links to instruments amended by the legislation, links to subsequent amendments to the legislation, link to current consolidated version of the legislation, links to current proposed amendments, links to Commission and Court of Justice decisions applying the legislation, and links to citations to implementing national laws in the case of E.U. directives.
EU legislative materials are also available in WestlawNext and Lexis.com, but not in Lexis Advance.
In Lexis.com, the Eur-Lex Law: Legislation file includes full-text, English language EC/EU treaties, legislation, preparatory documents, national provisions implementing Directives, parliamentary questions, EFTA, and other documents as provided by EUR-Lex. References to documents in other languages are also included. Sources include Series L and C of the O.J., SEC and COM final documents, etc.
To find legislation in Lexis when you have an OJ citation, search the citation segment, e.g. CITE(2010 oj l 20). To find a directive or regulation if you know the number, do a title segment search, e.g., TITLE(2009/147). This will retrieve the directive and all amending directives.
WestlawNext contains the full text of legislative acts of the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament, and the European Commission reported in the Official Journal of the European Community, L Series, including international agreements; secondary legislation such as regulations and European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) general decisions, directives, and recommendations; and supplementary legislation (legislation resulting from agreements between member states).
Lexis.com and WestlawNext do not link the various primary and secondary, as well as preparatory, final, and case law documents to one another, in the manner of Eur-Lex. Therefore, it is now easier to search comprehensively for relevant legislative information in Eur-Lex than it is in Lexis.com or WestlawNext.
The Official Journal is divided into two sections, L (Legislation) and C (Communications and Information).
Within the hierarchy of legislation, treaties are considered "primary legislation" and occupy the highest position of authority. The text of all treaties is available at the EU Treaties page.
Beneath treaties, "secondary legislation" includes regulations, directives, and decisions. Regulations, are directly binding in the member states. Directives require each member state to adopt local legislation to implement the directives' stated purposes. Decisions are directly binding on named entities to which they are addressed (e.g., corporations, individual member states), and are not universally binding, like regulations. All three forms of secondary legislation are published in Part L. For a general description of the forms of legislation, see the Regulations, Directives and Other Acts page.
Since directives require national implementing legislation, Europa also maintains a database, N-Lex, that links to this legislation, as provided by the member states themselves.
Each type of legislation has its own citation format and OJ citation as well. For example, the 2009 Directive on Conservation of Wild Birds is cited as Directive 2009/147/EC, 2010 O.J. L 20/7 (147th Directive of 2009, enacted under authority of the EC treaty, published in 2010 O.J. L, issue 20, p.7).
In January, 2015 the European Union adopted a simplified and uniform form of citaton, which is explained here.
If you have a citation, you can search the OJ directly.