EUR-Lex developments: 01/2024

This page summarises the main new features on EUR-Lex.

Accessibility

Several improvements have been made to EUR-Lex to make it more accessible to people with disabilities. The changes include the following:

‘Skip to main content’ link

the ‘skip to main content’ link in the header is now working correctly

Tooltips

tooltips in the timelines of the law-making procedures are keyboard accessible
all tooltips on EUR-Lex are announced by screen readers

Buttons

all buttons now have an accessible label
accessibility of the keyword buttons in the ‘expert search query’ has been improved

Interaction with screen readers and other assistive technologies

if a form field is filled in incorrectly, users of assistive technologies such as screen readers will be alerted to which field triggered the error
error messages are announced to users of assistive technologies
whenever users need to fill in a form field (e.g. in the search widgets), this will be announced by assistive technologies
several code improvements have been made to make sure the website works better with assistive technologies
decorative images are now correctly labelled so that they can be ignored by assistive technologies

Other accessibility changes

smooth scrolling in documents is deactivated when you click on the table of contents
keyboard navigation in the search results pages has been improved

Case file

The new ‘Case file’ feature gives you access to relevant documents and information related to an EU law case. It is available for the cases published in the Reports of cases.

To access this feature, navigate to the ‘Case file’ link on the left-hand side of a case page.

At the top of the ‘Case file‘ page, a box with a blue background contains general information about the case:

Case number
Title of the case
Name of the Court
Status of the case (closed, in progress, Stayed, Discontinued)
Link to relevant appeal case (where applicable)
Link to other cases with the same case number

The central part of the page provides a timeline with the main steps of the case (case brought; proceedings; decision) and the related main documents (communication published in the Official Journal; order; opinion of the advocate general; judgment; etc.).

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland

Based on the Withdrawal Agreement, which entered into force on 1 February 2020, the United Kingdom left the European Union. Nevertheless, under the Protocol on Ireland / Northern Ireland to the Withdrawal Agreement (the “Protocol”), part of the EU body of law (mostly related to the EU single market for goods, the customs union, sanitary and phytosanitary goods, and state aid) applies to and in the UK in respect of Northern Ireland.

To make it easier to consult this body of EU law, we created a dedicated page on the Protocol on EUR-Lex. You can also navigate to this dedicated page from the EUR-Lex homepage: under ‘Information’, click ‘Themes in focus’ and then select ‘Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland’ from the left-hand menu.

We have added the following new features to the page:

A search box to access specific Protocol-related documents by year, number and type of document. The search will run only on this specific collection of documents.
Notes relating to the applicability of rules under Annexes 1 to 5 of the Protocol which appear when you move the cursor over the titles of the sections in the ‘Navigation tree’ section.

Export and share expert search queries

You can now run, save and share expert search queries as URI or link.

Advanced search – lawmaking procedures

In the ‘lawmaking procedures’ section of the advanced search, we streamlined the drop-down menus ‘Type of activity’ and ‘Activities of Agents’ to make them shorter and easier to handle.

Experimental features - Deep linking

Deep linking has been extended to all document types on EUR-Lex.

This is an experimental feature that makes it possible to display links to other legal acts referred to in EUR-Lex documents.

‘Directory of case-law’ page

The Directory of case-law page has been redesigned so that the two different classification schemes (the one in place before the Lisbon Treaty and the one in place after the Lisbon Treaty) are displayed on the same page.

To see the full classification scheme that was in place prior to the Lisbon Treaty, click on ‘Consult the classification scheme in place before the Lisbon Treaty (up to 2009)’.

Meaningful tab titles

For regulations, directives and decisions, the text that appears in your browser’s tabs will now show the type of the document (regulation, directive or decision), its number, the language in which it is displayed on EUR-Lex and, if available, a short title describing the document (e.g. ‘GDPR’). This feature is useful if you open several tabs from EUR-Lex as it helps you navigate between them.

Example: the tab for ‘Regulation (EU) 2016/679 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data’ will read: Regulation 2016/679 - EN – gdpr – EUR-Lex.