Europa (web portal)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Europa |
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 The English main page |
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| URL | http://www.europa.eu/ |
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of site | Public service portal and institutional information |
| Owner | European Union |
| Created by | European Commission DG Communication EU Publications Office |
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 iss.europa.eu.
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[edit] 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.
- Further information: Europa (mythology)
[edit] Languages
- See also: Languages of the European Union
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.
[edit] 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.[1] This type of uproar by speakers of major EU languages other than English happens occasionally.
[edit] Services
Europa also offers services such as EUR-Lex, a Publications Office and libraries of photographs, videos and audio for the Commission and the Parliament.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Frattini upset over Italian language slip-up, www.euobserver.com Accessed 18 January 2007
