LBA505 - Finding EU Legal Information

EU legislation and cases affect the daily lives of everyone who lives, works or studies in the United Kingdom. You might need to find out about an EU safety regulation for a piece of equipment that you are designing or want to go to study in another EU country. Many sections of EU legislation are deeply embedded in the law of the UK.

This tutorial will enable you to:

N.B. The tutorial will not be discussing how to find the law of the individual member states. If you need to do this then you can try looking on the Worldlii website or the EU's N-Lex database, which is currently in development. There is also a separate Learn module on Finding UK Legal Information.

EU legal sources

The structure of EU law is very different to that of the UK. The different types of legal documents which can be found within the European Union's Eur-Lex database and on WestlawUK, on which this tutorial will concentrate, include:

Eur-Lex also includes: International Agreements, Preparatory Acts and Parliamentary Questions.

Please click on the links below to find out more about how to find the different types of legislation.

European Court Cases

The European Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance are based in Luxembourg and should not be confused with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The latter is not related to the European Union and is part of the Council of Europe. Unfortunately, however, the newspapers often refer to the 'European Court' in articles about any of the courts and so you can become muddled if the context is not considered carefully. The two main sections of the European Union institution are the Court of Justice and Court of First Instance.

Further information

If you would like any advice on finding EU legislation or cases, there are a number of contacts for you in the Library. Helen Young is happy to help you find legal information, whilst Louise Fletcher is responsible for the European Documentation Centre and is the Academic Librarian for PIRES. Other academic librarians have expertise in tracing EU materials in particular subject areas and so you could also contact the Academic Librarian responsible for your department. There is a list of the Academic Librarians on the Library's Staff Contact webpages.

Related Learn materials:

Finding UK Legal Information

Finding Social Science Information

The following books explain the process of finding legal information in more depth:

Clinch, P (2001) Using a law library: a student's guide to legal research skills, 2^nd ed., Blackstone.

Thomas, P (2001) Dane and Thomas How to use a law library: an introduction to legal skills, 4^th ed., Sweet & Maxwell.