Web guide European Union: social and economic issues
About this guide
The European Union (EU) is an economic and political partnership among 28 democracies. The EU has developed a single market and a monetary union. EU policies areas cover a lot of social and economic issues, such as taxation, competition rules, monetary affairs, employment and social development. The information from the EU on these issues on the Internet is extensive.
This guide provides a thematic overview of selected websites and databases to help you find EU information, statistical data, news, and literature on these topics.
Check the Webguide EU organizations for information on specific social/economic institutions or bodies within the EU (e.g. European Central Bank).
Starting points
European Union homepage
Official website of the European Union includes:
- Topics, offers a survey of the EU policy areas, including a brief description of the policy area, links to EU institutions and bodies, legislation and documentation
- EU institutions and other bodies includes information on and links to the websites of the institutions and organizations
- Life and Business in the EU offers links to information on live, work, study and doing business in the EU
- Publications offers links to EU-documents, legislation, statistics, historical documents and opinion polls
Economic issues
- EU by topic offers a brief description of the each policy area, links to EU institutions and bodies, legislation and documentation
- European Commission: Policy areas - provides references per policy area to relevant pages on the website of the Commission
- Business - industry, enterprise policies, small and medium-sized enterprises, internal market, free movement of services, competitiveness
- Climate Action
- Economy, finance and tax - single market, budget, competition, customs, economy, combating of fraud, and taxation
- EU tenders and contracts - information on EU tenders and public contracts. Current tenders can be found in the database TED
Social issues and environment
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EU by topic offers a brief description of the policy area, links to EU institutions and bodies, legislation and documentation
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European Commission: Policy areas - provides references per policy area to relevant pages on the website of the Commission
- Employment and social rights - employment, social rights and equal opportunities
- Environment, consumers and health - consumer affairs, environment, food safety, health, maritime policy, sustainable development
- EIROnline
Database of European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO) offering news and analysis on European industrial relations - Social Dialogue texts database
Database with documents and agreements made in various sectors of industry in the field of employment and industrial relations
Statistical data
- Eurostat
- Website of the EU statistical office, offers access to all Eurostat data and publications
- EU-Statistics and polls
Survey page with links to statistics on the EU and opinion polls - Economic databases and indicators
Web page of Directorate-General for Economic and Financial affairs with access to databases and documents with macro-economic analyses
Literature
- Archive of European Integration (AEI)
- Online repository and archive for research materials (reports, articles and official EU documents) on the topic of European integration and unification
- ECLAS
Central Library catalog of the European Union Commission - Library European University Institute
The library of the European University Institute in Florence offers important collections in the field of European integration - EU Bookshop
Online access offered by the Publications Office of the European Union to the European Union's official publications - Google Scholar
Search engine for scholarly literature like peer-reviewed articles, reports, books and theses. Data originate from sites of publishers, preprint archives and universities. Titles contain links to literature citations ("Cited by ...")
Reference works
- Inter Active Terminology for Europe (IATE)
- EU inter-institutional terminology database: digital dictionary with terminology in the languages of the European Union member states
- Eurovoc
Multilingual thesaurus - EU Whoiswho
Names and addresses of staff of the European Union institutions - Register of Expert Groups
Register listing formal and informal advisory bodies established either by Commission decisions or informally by the Commission services. The advisory bodies assist in preparing legislative proposals and policy initiatives
Topical issues
Information via the EU:
- EU Press Room
Press releases of the EU institutions. Use the database Press Release Database to search for older press releases.
Information originating from other organizations:
- EurActive
Media portal fully dedicated to EU affairs: news, policy and discussions EU policy areas. EurActive offers e-mail newsletter - Euobserver
News and comments on the EU. Euobserver offers RSS feeds and free subscription to their newsletter by e-mail
Search engines
Besides search engines like Google and Yahoo there also is a specialized search engine as to search EU information:
- Search Europe
Searching only official European Union (europa.eu) web pages with Google. It is possible to limit search to legal information (law search) on the EU sites.