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Use quotation marks to search for an "exact phrase". Append an asterisk (*) to a search term to find variations of it (transp*, 32019R*). Use a question mark (?) instead of a single character in your search term to find variations of it (ca?e finds case, cane, care).
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Most documents on EUR-Lex are analysed and classified in a directory and/or tagged with one or more sets of keywords.

Directories

EUR-Lex contains five directories providing access to EU law and case law by topic. You can, for example, find all the EU legal acts on fisheries, and all the EU preparatory documents on health protection.

These directories have 20 chapters each. Chapters are then divided into subsections that cover more specific topics.

The directory of EU case law has its own classification scheme.

EuroVoc

Browsing EU law by keyword is another option.

EuroVoc is the EU's multilingual and multidisciplinary thesaurus. It contains keywords, organized in 21 domains and 127 subdomains, which are used to describe the content of documents in EUR-Lex.

This thematic classification system enables you to find all the documents on a particular topic, such as greenhouse gases.

Subject matter

You can also retrieve documents by their specific subject matter. 'Subject matter' is a classification tool comprising a list of over 200 keywords in alphabetical order. It is based on the subdivisions of the treaties and on the areas of activity of the institutions. The descriptors are less specific than those used in the directory code but provide a general overview of the content of the document.

For example, you can see the list of types of subject matter in the advanced search and find all documents on a specific subject, or directly click on a specific type of subject matter in the 'Document information' tab of a document to be redirected to all the documents with the same subject matter.