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Welcome to Dorie

About Dorie

Dorie is intended for a specialised audience interested in European institutional matters. It is a collection of documents put together over the years by the European Commission for its own purposes. The documents concern EU institutions and decision-making processes, and various intergovernmental conferences (including the 2002-03 constitutional convention) that have made changes to the founding treaties.

What kinds of documents can I find in Dorie?

Dorie contains legal acts, minutes of meetings, articles and press releases, speeches by European leaders and internal Commission working documents and notes.

Your search should find an information sheet for each document, as well as the document itself (unless it is under copyright).

Languages in Dorie

You can search in English or French.

Many documents (some of which date back to the origins of the EU) are available only in those two languages. Some are available in several languages, and a small number are available in all languages. If you cannot retrieve the language version you are looking for in Dorie, you may be able to find it in other databases such as Eur-lex.

Querying Dorie

  1. Search by theme:
    You can find out what positions European bodies took on particular institutional issues under the 'theme' tab by browsing the directory (with folders labelled e.g. EU Council / voting – decision-making procedure / definition of qualified majority).
  2. Other search criteria:
    In the 'main fields' tab, you can select: document title, type, date, name of decision-maker (e.g. Commission/Barroso J.M.), setting (e.g. intergovernmental conference, IGC/Amsterdam). You can combine several criteria.

Under construction

Dorie is still under construction. Although many documents are already available, it will take about five years to provide access to the full collection. Priority is being given to the basic intergovernmental conference texts and documents on the following topics:

  • Commission/composition/number of members
  • Commission/nomination/appointment/confirmation
  • Council of the European Union/voting – decision-making procedures/definition of qualified majority
  • Council of the European Union/voting – decision-making procedures/qualified majority
  • Right of initiative
  • Fundamental rights/Charter of fundamental rights
  • Agencies
  • European Parliament/Role and powers of the European Parliament

Over a million pages of past documents have to be digitised and analysed before they can be placed in the database. As soon as possible, new texts will also be uploaded every day.