CONSILIUM - How to search in the register

How to search in the register

1. Specifying your search criteria - General principles

You may either enter your search criteria in one or more fields or leave all the fields blank.
In the latter case, no restrictions are applied, except those defined by the search options on the Simple search page and the Advanced search page.

A logical AND will always operate between your search criteria in the different fields.

Example: specifying 10/1/99 as document date and AGRI as subject matter will return all documents both dated 10 January 1999 AND having AGRI (= Agriculture) as subject matter.

The text searches are neither case- nor accent-sensitive. This means that a search on the French word eleve or ELEVE will find all documents containing the words Elève, élevé, élève, etc.

Beside each search field there is a help button that will open a box with short explanatory texts.

2. Search forms (simple search, advanced search)

Text fields (Document Number, Title, Text and Subject Matter)

■ Format

In the text fields you can enter the search terms. If you do not specify any operator within a field, a logical AND will be assumed.

Examples:
(All the examples given hereafter assume that the user has specified his selection criteria in the title field.)

"Council" will return all documents the titles of which contain the word "Council".

"European Council" will return all documents the titles of which contain the word "European" AND the word "Council". These words need not necessarily be located near to each other.

Operators

The following operators may be used:

■ Boolean operators

& Logical AND
| Logical OR
^ Logical AND NOT

Examples:

European & Council will return all documents the titles of which contain the word "European" AND the word "Council". These words need not necessarily be located near to each other.

European | Council will return all documents the titles of which contain the word "European" OR the word "Council" OR both words.

European ^ Council will return all documents the titles of which contain the word "European" but NOT the word "Council".

■ Proximity operators

" " Phrase (Exact) search
{ } Proximity respecting the order of the search terms
[ ] Proximity in any order
#n Specifies the proximity distance in characters

Examples:

"European Council" will return all documents the titles of which contain the word "European" AND the word "Council" next to each other.

{European Council} will return all documents the titles of which contain the word "European" AND the word "Council" in that order and separated by no more than (the default of) 50 characters.

[European Council] will return all documents the titles of which contain the word "European" AND the word "Council" in any order and separated by no more than (the default of) 50 characters.

#10{European Council} will return all documents the titles of which contain the word "European" AND the word "Council" in that order and separated by no more than 10 characters.

■ Weighting operator

@n Weighting per term

Examples:

@1 beer @10 wine Associates a weighting of 1 to the term "beer" and a weighting of 10 to the term "wine". When you select "Order by Relevance" in the options, the results will be sorted on the basis of the document's relevance. The relevance is calculated as follows: 1 times the number of occurrences of the term "beer" in the title of the document plus 10 times the number of occurrences of the term "wine", i.e. occurrences of the word "wine" are considered as being ten times more important than occurrences of the word "beer".

■ Wild cards

? 1 character
* zero, 1 or more characters.

Examples:

Broad* will return all documents the titles of which contain the words: "Broad", "Broaden", "Broadcast", etc.

Reali?ation will return all documents the titles of which contain the words: "Realization" or "Realisation".

*ation will return all documents the titles of which contain the words: "Realisation", "Activation", etc.

*eli?at* will return all documents the titles of which contain the words: "Delicate", "Delicately", etc.

■ Combination of operators

Operators can be combined with parentheses.

Examples:

( (wine|beer) & whisk*) will return all documents the titles of which contain the word "wine" OR the word "beer" AND containing the word "whiskey", "whisky", "whiskeys", etc.

( *ine | (beer & whiskey)) will return all documents the titles of which contain the word "wine" (for example) OR contain the words "beer" AND "whiskey".

Interinstitutional file

The Commission allocates an interinstitutional code number to each of its proposals for Community legislation. The code is composed of three elements: year/series number and an abbreviation (in brackets) which indicates the legislative procedure applicable (e.g. COD: co-decision (2010/0303 (COD)); CNS: consultation procedure (2010/0387 (CNS)).

The use of the interinstitutional code number faciliates the compilation of complete dossiers on the progress of each procedure, from its inception until it is adopted by the Council or by the Parliament and the Council acting jointly, as the case may be. Using the interinstitutional file number as a search criterium may thus facilitate the search of documents issued in the framework of Council deliberations concerning draft legislative files.

Subject matters

You may either enter one or several subject matters directly or consult the list containing all available subject matters by clicking on the button beside the Subject Matter field (labelled "List"). Please note that documents might not exist for each particular subject matter.

Date fields (Document Date and Date of Meeting)

The date is chosen using the date picker. You may either choose the exact date or click on "+" to choose a range of dates. An operator may also be chosen (see "Operators") to further limit your choice of date.

■ Operators

The following operators are available:
<none> Defaults to "Equal to"
= Equal to
<> Not equal to
> Since the specified date
>= On or since the specified date
< Before the specified date
<= On or before the specified date
: Between two dates

Examples:

01/07/1999 will return all documents dated 1 July 1999

=05/07/1999 will return all documents dated 5 July 1999

<> 07/02/1999 will return all documents with a date other than 7 February 1999

>03/06/1999 will return all documents which are more recent than 3 June 1999

>=20/05/2000 will return all documents which are more recent than 19 May 2000

<03/08/2000 will return all documents with a date before 3 August 2000

<=05/03/2000 will return all documents dated 5 March 2000 or earlier

01/10/1999:30/11/1999 will return all documents dated between 1 October 1999 and 30 November 1999

Document language

By default, your goal language is the same as your interface language. You may also choose to search documents issued in another official EU language than your interface language. Note, however, that the only documents listed on the result page are the ones existing in the language of your search. A search in all languages might sometimes give more results.

The option "multilingual" refers to documents which have been drafted in two or several official EU languages.

3. Result page

The result page has 3 columns: Document Information, Title and Content.

■ In the "Document Information" column, clicking on the underlined document number will open the document reference page where you can find information about that particular document.

The document number of a specific document may be followed by one or more suffixes identifying the different versions of this document. The following suffixes are used:

Suffix	Meaning
ADD	Addendum
COR	Corrigendum
REV	Revision
EXT	Extract
AMD	Amendment

Each suffix is followed by a sequential number. There may be multiple suffixes indicating the different versions of a particular document.

Examples: REV 1 (the first revision), REV 2 COR 1 (the first corrigendum to the second revision), COR 1 REV 2 (the second revision of the first corrigendum). If different versions of a particular document exist, you will see an icon with a "+" under the document number.

Clicking on this icon will open a new window which lists all the existing versions of the document in chronological order according to the document date.

■ In the "Content" column, there is an icon corresponding to the availability of the document to the public.

Six icons are possible:

Icon	Meaning
	The content of the document has been released to the public and is available in HTML format
	The content of the document has been released to the public and is available in PDF format
	The content of the document has been released to the public but is not available in the Register. Please contact the Public Information service of the Council to obtain a copy.
	The content of this document is not accessible. Nevertheless, a request for access can be sent to the Access to Documents service by using the electronic form.
	The content of the document has been partially released to the public. To obtain a copy, please contact the Access to Documents service by using the electronic form.
	The content of the document has been partially released to the public and is available in PDF format.