EU Legislative Process

Today I learnt where to find a step-by-step guide to the EU legislative process.

There are handy guides to each of the decision making procedures on the European Parliament website. You are helpfully provided with the history and outline of the procedure, a flowchart and links to the relevant primary legislation.

Included are:

Ordinary legislative procedure
Consultation
Consent
Enhanced Cooperation
Appointment procedures
Legislative initiative procedure
Other legislative procedures

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparliament/en/006ff89b2c/Introduction.html

Eurotalk - an email discussion list for EU information issues

Today I learnt about Eurotalk, a Jiscmail discussion list for EU information issues.

Eurotalk (run by the European Information Association or EIA) is a forum to discuss EU information issues, to share expertise in handling EU information and for those seeking help with EU materials. As the EIA is to be dissolved by the end of 2012, the list has been opened to non-EIA members to explore the possibility of establishing a new group.

To join Eurotalk:

https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=EUROTALK

European Information Association:

http://www.eia.org.uk/

EU Whoiswho

Today I learnt an easy way to find out the names of EU officials.

EU Whoiswho is another valuable (if unimaginatively named) online resource from the Publications Office. In fact it is the official directory of the European Union.

You can search by organizational entity or browse the complex institutional hierarchy. When you’ve found the institution you are interested in you are presented with a list of names and positions (no contact details are provided unfortunately).

EU Whoiswho would be really useful if you needed to know, for example, who sits on the Governing Council of the European Central Bank, the current members of the European Council, or name of the director of the Library, Research and Documentation Directorate at the European Court of Justice. 

You can also search by name to find out what position an individual holds.

EU Whoiswho:

http://europa.eu/whoiswho/public/

EuroVoc - the EU's Multilingual Thesaurus

Today I learnt that EuroVoc is an online, multilingual thesaurus covering the activities of the EU, maintained by the Publications Office.

You can search for a term or browse by subject. Either way you are told what your term is in 22 EU languagues, plus Croatian and Serbian. It is pretty addictive if you like that kind of thing. As well as viewing online, you can also download sections of the thesaurus (part of the alphabet, or a particular subject).

Readers are also invited to suggest changes to the thesaurus to help improve the database using an online form.

EuroVoc:
http://eurovoc.europa.eu/