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ECLI - European Case-Law Identifier

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The ECLI is a uniform identifier that enables you to identify judicial decisions more easily. It also makes it easier to access, search for, identify, cite and link EU and national case-law.

The identifier consists of five parts in the following order, with each separated by a colon:

  1. Abbreviation "ECLI"
  2. Country code (2 characters)
  3. Court code (1-7 characters)
  4. Year of the decision (4 digits)
  5. Unique identifying number (max. 25 characters, dots allowed)

Examples (Court of Justice of the European Union):

ECLI

Document

ECLI:EU:C:1998:27

27th decision by the Court of Justice in 1998

ECLI:EU:F:2010:80

80th decision by the Civil Service Tribunal in 2010

ECLI:EU:T:2012:426

426th decision by the General Court in 2012

The fifth part of the Court of Justice of the European Union’s ECLI is a sequential number, restarted every year and specific for each court (Court of Justice, General Court, Civil Service Tribunal). It is not the CELEX number.

The ECLI was introduced further to Council Conclusions 2011/C 127/01.

The ECLI search engine on the European e-justice portal​ lets you search for legal decisions/judgments with an ECLI.

More information on ECLI