European Parliament
Plenary debates: Note to the reader

• Verbatim Report of Proceedings

  • The compilation of texts of speeches by Members of the European Parliament in plenary sitting is known as the Verbatim Report of Proceedings (Compte Rendu in Extenso - CRE - in French). Every speech appears in the language used by the speaker (who may make corrections to the text).

    This version, traditionally known as the "Rainbow" edition, is first published on internet in PDF at the same time as it is sent to the printer for production of the paper copy.

    It can be accessed by date only - i.e. the day of the sitting.
    
    

  • A few working days later, the same text appears in an HTML version. This is easier to read and a short time later is incorporated into the "search by speaker" and "search by word in title" functions.
    
    
  • This multilingual edition is subsequently replaced by a revised edition that incorporates any corrections made by speakers..
    
    

• Provisional translation

• The "Rainbow" files are translated in the following weeks into all eleven official languages. As soon as the translations are sent in by the freelance teams, they are made available to the internet public in PDF.

• Final edition

  The final edition of the translated Debates is published (in HTML) on Europarl - replacing the provisional, multilingual edition - as soon as the final corrections in the 11 language versions have been completed.

• Abbreviations following speakers' names

  PPE-DE Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats
  PSE Group of the Party of European Socialists
  ELDR Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party
  Verts/ALE Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
  GUE/NGL Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left
  UEN Union for Europe of the Nations Group
  EDD Group for a Europe of Democracies and Diversities
  NI Non-attached
  
  

• Searching for an intervention

• Except for the current month, all interventions are also accessible via:

  • a search by speaker,
    
    
  • and a search by word in the title of the debate,
    
    

  but this search does not include PDF versions .

• What does "PDF" mean?

• The European Parliament publishes certain documents in PDF or Portable Document Format, which has the great advantage of enabling documents to be made available quickly.

  There are two drawbacks, however:

  • the software needed to view PDF files is not installed on all PCs. You may therefore need to obtain and install Acrobat Reader. You can download it free from the following address:
    
    http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html
    
    
  • PDF files are not included in searches by speaker or by word in title.
    
    

• CD-ROM

  Pursuant to the decision of the Bureau of Parliament on 1 December 1999, the debates are no longer published in hardcopy in the Official Journal; a CD-ROM will be produced at regular intervals.The CD-ROMs are published about eight times a year. The last one contains all the debates for the year in question.
  
  They may be obtained from the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities and its sales agents (see http://eur-op.eu.int or information contained on the CD-ROMs themselves).