Spotlight on … EU Publications

Working in the European Union we need to be aware of their legislation and directives, particularly with regard to environmental issues.

The EU Bookshop is an online bookshop, library and archive of publications dating back to 1952, managed by the Publications Office of the European Union in Luxembourg. It contains 110,000 titles and 235,000 corresponding electronic versions (PDFs, e-books) in more than 50 languages, including the 24 official languages of the EU.

To obtain a hardcopy of certain titles, you may have to pay a small fee, but pdf and e-book versions are free of charge.

The vast majority of titles on EU Bookshop are authored by EU institutions such as the European Commission, European Parliament, Council of the EU, EU agencies and other bodies. Some titles are produced jointly with partner publishers and/or other international organisations. Others are written by individuals whose work is endorsed by the institution they work for.

You can browse the bookshop through themes, such as Environment – Ecology and within that you can look at Regulations - or you search for specific topics.

From the home page you can link through to Eur-lex which gives you access to European Union law. This includes Summaries of EU legislation, specifically Environment and Climate Change. You might, for example, want to access the EU environmental impact assessment rules or the Protection of groundwater against pollution regulations .

These are some recent titles which I thought would be of particular interest:

• The health and social benefits of nature and biodiversity protection
• The EU birds and habitats directives
• Our planet, our future: Fighting climate change together
• Best LIFE Nature projects 2014
• Looking to nature for a healthier Europe