About European Commission

Europa (sometimes capitalised EUROPA) is the official web portal of the European Union (EU). It gives basic information on how the EU works, the latest EU news and events, as well as links to websites of institutions, EU agencies, representations in EU member countries and diplomatic missions of the European Union around the world. Europa.eu is the common domain of the EU institutions. The European institutions’ websites use a common second level domain .europa.eu. This means that all agencies and institutions have their respective name (or initials) in addition to the subdomain europa.eu as a standard web address. For example, the address of the Institute for Security Studies is iss.europa.eu. EUROPA was first published in February 1995 at the G7 ministerial meeting on information society in Brussels. Originally designed for that specific event, EUROPA expanded rapidly and the European Commission decided to develop it into an information resource for everyone, specialising in all matters covered by the EU Treaties and the work of the European institutions.