CELEX numbers

Sector

Documents in EUR-Lex fall into one of 12 sectors.

1. Treaties

2. International agreements

3. Legal acts

4. Complementary legislation

5. Preparatory documents

6. EU case-law

7. National transposition

8. References to national case-law concerning EU law

9. Parliamentary questions

0. Consolidated texts

C. Other documents published in the Official Journal C series

E. EFTA documents

Year

The year usually describes when the document was adopted.

Document type

Each document type has a descriptor. Descriptors can have 1 or 2 letters.

Some common descriptors:

Sector 3 - Legal acts

L for Directives

R for Regulations

D for Decisions

Sector 5 - Preparatory documents

PC for Legislative proposals by the Commission (COM documents), etc.

DC for other COM documents (green and white papers, communications, reports...)

SC for SWD documents (staff working documents, impact assessments...)

JC for JOIN documents (adopted jointly by the Commission and the High Representative)

Sector 6 - EU case-law

CJ for Judgments by Court of Justice

CC for Opinions of the advocate-general

CO for Orders of the Court of Justice

Document number

Most CELEX numbers end in 4 digits. These reflect different types of information, e.g.:

• Official number - e.g. 32017R2394: a sequential number attributed to the document at the moment of its publication in the Official Journal. It is assigned by the Publications Office.
• Internal number - e.g. 52018PC0033: assigned by the author of the document, here the Commission (PC).
• Date of publication - e.g. 32012A0424(01): the month and day of publication in the Official Journal. It is followed by a sequential number in brackets, as other similar CELEX numbers might have been published on the same day.

Examples by sector

• Treaties (sector 1)

  There are 3 digits or a letter code after the descriptor. They indicate the number of an article of the Treaty.

  Example: 11957E086 is the number for Article 86 of the EEC treaty (1957).

  Consolidated versions of Treaties are indicated by the year of consolidation.

  Example: Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union:

  12016E – table of contents, consolidated version 2016

  12016E/TXT – consolidated version 2016

  12016E003 – Article 3, consolidated version 2016.

• International agreements (sector 2)

  International agreements are identified by their publication date.

  Example: International agreement 22006A1230(03) was published in the Official Journal on 30 December 2006.

  If several agreements are published on the same day, only the number in brackets changes: e.g. 22006A1230 (01).

• Case-law (sector 6)

  The year is the one in which the case entered the Court’s register.

  The document number is based on the case number issued by the Court of Justice.

  Example: 6 2004 TJ0 201 relates to the judgment in the 201st case entered in the register in 2004. The case number is T-201/04.

• National transposition measures (sector 7)

  The first 10 characters are identical to those of the CELEX number of the transposed act, with the exception of the first one, which represents the CELEX sector: 3 (‘Legal acts’) and is replaced by 7 (‘National transposition’). The following 9 characters represent the year, type and unique number of the transposed act.

  After the first 10 characters, a 3-letter country code indicates the Member State that is the author of the given national transposition measure.

  At the end of the CELEX number, the number following the underscore is the unique identifier from the database of the Secretariat-General of the Commission. These identifiers are of 2 types, the most recent one including a year prefix.

  Examples:

  72018L2002POL_285543

  72013L0032AUT_202103576

  Identifiers with an asterisk are used for display purposes only, when the same unique transposition measure implements more than one legal act. They are not real CELEX numbers. The asterisk replaces the part of the identifier inherited from the transposed acts.

  Example: 7*EST_202103476 is displayed for a measure transposing 2 directives.

  There are 2 different CELEX numbers attributed to this measure: 72013L0034EST_202103476 and 72014L0095EST_202103476

• Corrigenda

  Corrigenda have the same number as the document they are correcting, with R(xx) added at the end (xx being the number of the corrigendum).

  Example: 32009L0164R( 01 ) is the first corrigendum to Directive 32009L0164.

  A corrigendum may relate to one or more language versions – or even all of them.

• Consolidated texts (sector 0)

  Consolidated texts have the same number as the basic act – but their sector is ‘0’.

  It is followed by the date of application of the last amendment to the act.

  Example: 02009L0156-20161018

  More information on consolidated texts

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How CELEX numbers are composed (in English only)