Scope of competence of the Office
Article 3
1. The Office shall have competence for the following: (a) publishing the Official Journal of the European Union (hereinafter Official Journal) and guaranteeing that it is authentic; (b) publishing the other mandatory publications; (c) publishing or co-publishing non-mandatory publications entrusted to the Office under the prerogatives of each institution, in particular in the context of the institutions’ communication activities; (d) publishing or co-publishing publications on its own initiative, including publications intended to promote its own services; in this context, the Office may procure translations by means of a service contract; (e) developing, maintaining and updating electronic publishing services for the public; (f) making all legislation and other official texts available to the public; (g) preserving all publications of the institutions and making them available to the public in electronic form; (h) allocating international standard numbers and/or catalogue numbers to the institutions’ publications; (i) managing reproduction and translation rights in respect of the institutions’ publications; (j) promoting and selling the publications and services which it offers to the public. 2. The Office shall provide advice and assistance to the institutions for: (a) programming and planning their publications programmes; (b) implementing their publishing projects, whatever the publishing medium; (c) providing page make-up and design for their publishing projects; (d) providing information on trends in the publications market in the Member States and on the subjects likely to find the widest audience; (e) deciding print-runs and establishing distribution plans; (f) pricing and selling publications; (g) promoting, distributing and evaluating their publications, whether free of charge or offered for sale; (h) analysing, evaluating and setting up websites and Web services for the public; (i) drafting framework contracts for publishing activities; (j) providing technological supervision of publishing systems.