The Europa Web Guide is the official rulebook for the European Commission's web presence, covering editorial, visual, regulatory and technical aspects. It describes how DGs and executive agencies should plan, design, build, maintain and archive their websites.
To ensure the coherence, relevance and cost-effectiveness of the Commission’s overall web presence, in line with the decisions on synergies and efficiencies, this guide contains both mandatory rules and guidelines based on best practice and industry standards that are highly recommended.
Rules
EU domain and subdomains
The most significant rule is to host all Commission-owned websites in the europa.eu domain, in line with the decision of the EU institutions from 2005 (decision of the Secretaries General and Annexe 2 - In French only - PDF).
The EU institutions decided to create a dedicated subdomain on the ‘.eu’ internet domain for their web presence called “europa”. They ruled out the use of second-level domains directly under the ‘.eu’ domain arguing that this confirmed their will to offer the public a simple, unique access to all information on the European Union published by the EU institutions. They also wanted to combat the hostile, abusive use of addresses suggesting an official second-level domain URL relation with the EU institutions.
The use of the Europa web domain also helps users to understand that they are visiting an authentic EU website.
Branding
Depending on the communication need and the target audience, websites owned by the Commission are either EU or EC branded.
- EC branding: websites concerning the Commission’s activities
- EU branding: websites with content that goes beyond the activities of one single EU institution
URL structure
The European Commission, Parliament and the Council agreed on common rules for the europa.eu domain and subdomains. The web address is a guarantee of trustworthiness and reliability. It provides a coherent structure for the domain and a good user experience.
- EC branded websites are hosted on a 4th level domain under the 3rd level: ec.europa.eu
- EU branded websites become either a 4th level domain site under their theme subdomain (e.g. campaign.europa.eu) or a 3rd level domain under europa.eu
URL names must follow rules dictated by user experience such as avoiding acronyms, capital letters, chained multiple words and foreign language, etc.
Site category
To ensure editorial coherence and a clear architecture of its web presence, the Commission divided its websites into categories, based on the communication needs and their relation to the two main websites, called core sites, respectively the Commission’ site: https://commission.europa.eu and the inter-institutional EU website: https://european-union.europa.eu. Other websites are either standardised or harmonised, where rules and design templates depend on the category.
Visual identity
The visual identity of the web presence is based on the Commission’s official Visual Identity charter. For coherence and transparency reasons, it is vital to correctly implement it.
To ensure the visual coherence across websites, there are several mandatory design elements per type of branding and site category. Design rules and templates are available with explanations in the Europa Component Library (ECL).
Accessibility
Web accessibility is about ensuring that everyone, including people with disabilities, such as visual, hearing, motor or cognitive impairments, is able to use and interact with websites and applications.
To achieve this, the European Commission requires that all its websites, mobile and web-based applications, comply with the Web Accessibility Directive (Directive (EU) 2016/2102).
The relevant technical rules are set out in European accessibility standard EN 301 549, which closely follows the industry standard, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
The target compliance level is WCAG 2.1, Level 'AA'.
Corporate solutions
Whenever possible, corporate web solutions must be used for reasons of cost-efficiency or security. One of the main elements of this offer is the Europa Web Publishing Platform, which provides state-of-the-art, off-the-shelf software as a service. Its use results in economies of scale for the creation of websites and saves time. Other corporate tools facilitate web publishing in the European Commission: OP archiving services, EuropaSearch, Europa Analytics, Webtools, EUSurvey, AV portal, Web streaming portal. More information is in DIGIT’s catalogue (EU Login required).
Data protection
The European Commission is subject to the related EU Regulation’s legal obligations described in Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 concerning the protection of personal data, therefore, its websites need to be fully compliant.
Intellectual property rights
The Reuse literary (articles/studies/reports/etc. or excerpts thereof) or artistic (photos/graphs/drawings/etc.) works created within the European institutions or bodies published on EC websites are subject to the “Reuse guidelines – Using Creative Commons licenses for the distribution and reuse of Commission documents” (EU login required). Third party works published on EC websites should hold the adapted copyright or legal notice.
Archiving
The websites of the EU institutions, agencies and bodies are archived 4 times per year. Website owners can ask for ad hoc archiving when they revamp or take a website offline.
Requests procedures
To ensure that the creation of a new website or the revamp of an existing one are in line with the existing rules and guidelines, all Commission services must strictly observe the web request procedure: file the request with DG Communication, at the beginning of a project, before committing any budget or starting any development. DG Communication will assess the request against the requirement and allocate the relevant web address. The procedure can take up to 25 working days.
Guidelines
This guide also contains many recommendations to help you provide state-of-the-art web communication and to ensure harmony and authenticity of the European Commission’s web presence.
Architecture and navigation
The Commission’s web presence is user-centered. The section on architecture and navigation explains how to structure information to make it findable.
Design recommendations
On top of the mandatory design elements mentioned above, the Europa Web Guide makes an inventory of web design principles key to the Commission’s web presence, such as being inclusive and designing for multiculturalism. Respecting these principles helps ensure a coherent, user-centered online experience for our users.
Content guidelines
The content guidelines provide user-centric advice on page layouts and components for EC websites. This section also provides useful information regarding the current language policy and web writing guidelines.
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Search engine optimisation starts at the content design phase. Following content guidelines is the first step to content SEO. This section offers recommendations regarding the creation of hyperlinks as well as guidelines to avoid ranking loss when migrating a website to a new location. It also offers information on Europa Analytics and technical SEO.
Contact and support
The Europa Web Guide is under the responsibility of the Europa Web Communication Unit (B3) within DG Communication.
The Europa Web Guide is the successor of the Information Providers’ Guide. If you are interested in older rules and guidelines, you can visit the archived IPG (EU login required).
Need further assistance on this topic? Please contact the team in charge of Europa Domain Management (EU Login required).