European Union URLs Changed

Since earlier this month, European Union institutional websites have a new ".eu" domain name. This means that sites whose addresses used to end with ".eu.int" now have a ".eu" ending instead. Many EU sites have also been renamed, sometimes in major ways.

If you search for the European Union On-Line Gateway at the old address of "europa.eu.int", you will be redirected to "http://europa.eu/".

So any site under the responsibility of any EU official body will be redirected from an .eu.int address to .europa.eu. For example:

• "publications.eu.int/" leads to "publications.europa.eu/" (Office for Official Publications of the European Communities)
• the EU legal website EUR-Lex, formerly at "europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/", is now located at "eur-lex.europa.eu/"
• the European Commission, which used to be at "europa.eu.int/comm" is now located at "ec.europa.eu", the European Council, once "ue.eu.int/cms3_fo/index.htm", now has the official address of "consilium.europa.eu/cms3_fo/index.htm", etc.

As much as possible, EU webmasters have tried to move the name or identifying snippet of the various databases or sites from after the forward slash to the beginning of the URL: the "eur-lex" segment identifying the EUR-Lex legal database has shifted from the original "europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/" (after the slash) to "eur-lex.europa.eu/"

Thanks to the French law blog Précisément.org for the information.