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Table of Contents
Legislation general / NOTES & COMMENTS
dources of law → type of acts → delegated & implementing layer standards EFSA role how to cite and EURLex member state law
CEN/TC 454 standards
Beter description
=== The novel food catalogue
Tone of the EFSA section
The sentence about an adverse EFSA opinion being “almost always fatal” to an application is a practical truth that a professional will appreciate, but it is slightly informal.
References to consolidated versions of legal acts
We prefer to use links to EURlex consolidated versions of the legal acts as those are practically the most usable. To show to which version we are referring in these pages we always try to refer the dated version - in this case the user sees that the cited version has more recent amendments.
That is an excellent solution — it is actually better than just linking to the latest version, because it makes the reference explicit and traceable in both directions:
The reader sees exactly which version was used when writing the page. If a newer consolidated version exists, EUR-Lex will show it, and the reader can immediately see that something may have changed since the page was written. It creates an implicit audit trail: when we update a page, we update the date suffix in the link, which signals to readers that the reference has been reviewed.
The format CELEX:0XXXXXXXXXXX-YYYYMMDD is also the format EUR-Lex itself uses internally when you navigate to a specific consolidated version, so it is the most precise and stable reference possible.
A few practical notes for applying this consistently:
Finding the date suffix: On EUR-Lex, navigate to the document, click “Consolidated versions” in the left panel, and select the most recent one. The URL in your browser will contain the date in the YYYYMMDD format — copy that as the suffix.
What to do when there is no consolidated version: Some acts (particularly Recommendations, older Decisions, or very recent acts not yet amended) have no consolidated version. In those cases we link to the original with its standard CELEX number and note “no consolidated version available.”
Date of consolidation vs date of last amendment: The consolidation date shown in EUR-Lex is the date up to which amendments have been incorporated, not necessarily the date the consolidation document was published. It is worth noting in the page footer which consolidation date was used, so a reader can quickly check whether any amendment adopted after that date exists.