The Official Journal of the European Union (the OJEU) is the official gazette of record for the European Union (EU). It is published every working day in all of the official languages of the member states of the EU. Only legal acts published in the Official Journal are binding.

History

It was first published on 30 December 1952 as the Official Journal of the European Coal and Steel Community, then renamed Official Journal of the European Communities with the establishment of the European Community, before taking its current title when the Treaty of Nice entered into force on 1 February 2003. Since 1998, the journal has been available online via the EUR-Lex service. On 1 July 2013, published issues of the Official Journal began to have legal value only in electronic form, per Article 5 of Regulation (EU) No 216/2013. From this date, the printed version has lost its legal value. Each issue is published as a set of documents in PDF/A format (one per official language) plus one XML document ensuring the overall coherency through hashes and a qualified electronic signature (a kind of digital signature defined in European law) extended with a trusted time stamp.

Publication

The journal comprises three series: