Europa (web portal)

Infobox Website
name = Europa



caption = The English main page
url = http://www.europa.eu/
commercial = No
type = Public service portal and
institutional information
registration =
owner = European Union
author = European Commission
DG Communication
EU Publications Office
launch date =
current status =
revenue =

Europa (sometimes written EUROPA), the official web portal of the European Union, is intended to improve the public’s interaction with EU institutions by quickly directing website visitors to the services or information they are seeking. Europa links to all EU agencies and institutions in addition to press releases and audiovisual content from press conferences. Europa is also an umbrella over the EU sites in the sense that all agencies and institutions have got their respective name, (or initials) plus the subdomain".europa.eu" as standard URL. For example, the Institute for Security Studies' address is [http://www.iss.europa.eu/ iss.europa.eu] .

Name

'Europa' is commonly recognised as the most neutral way of writing 'Europe' when it comes to compromising all EU languages into a single web-portal name, because 'Europe' translates into 'Europa' in most EU languages, as well as the fact that the name of the continent originates from a character in Greek mythology called Europa.

Languages

All legislation and documents of political importance are published in all 23 official EU languages. Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish. Documents which are not legally binding are usually published in English, French and German.

Translation controversy

In January 2007, EU commissioner Franco Frattini criticised the web service for not translating an article about the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome in Italian, his own language. [ [http://euobserver.com/?aid=23297 Frattini upset over Italian language slip-up] , EUobserver Accessed 18 January 2007] This type of uproar by speakers of major EU languages other than English happens occasionally.

ervices

Europa also offers services such as EUR-Lex, a Publications Office and libraries of photographs, videos and audio for the Commission and the Parliament.

ee also

* Publications Office
* EUR-Lex
* European NAvigator
* EU Agencies
* EU Institutions

References

External links

* [http://www.europa.eu Europa]
* [http://www.geteuropa.com GetEuropa] , a search engine dedicated to Europa.eu