The English main page |
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| URL | http://europa.eu/ |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of site | Public service portal and institutional information |
| Owner | European Union |
| Created by | DG Communication EU Publications Office |
Europa (sometimes capitalised EUROPA) is the official web portal of the European Union (EU). It is intended to improve the public’s interaction with EU institutions by quickly directing website visitors to the services or information they are seeking. Europa links to all EU agencies and institutions in addition to press releases and audiovisual content from press conferences. Europa is also an umbrella over the EU sites in the sense that all agencies and institutions have got their respective name (or initials) in addition to the subdomain.europa.eu as standard URL. For example, the address of the Institute for Security Studies is iss.europa.eu.
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All legislation and documents of political importance are published in all 23 official EU languages: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish. Documents which are not legally binding are usually published in English, French and German.
In January 2007, EU commissioner Franco Frattini criticised the web service for not translating an article about the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome into Italian, his own language.[1]
Europa also offers services such as EUR-Lex, a Publications Office and libraries of photographs, videos and audio for the Commission and the Parliament.
Europa hosts Health-EU, a thematic portal on health in 22 official languages of the EU, which contains information from the EU member countries, non-government organisations and international bodies.