Dear colleagues
You may be interested to see details of the following Press Release:
29 January 2004
PRESS RELEASE: The Publications Office renews the contracts for the production of the Official Journal of the European Union in 20 languages
On the 27th of January 2004, Mr Thomas L. Cranfield, Director of the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, invited the representatives of all the selected companies to sign the 10 new contracts for the production of the Official Journal of the European Union in 20 languages from 1 May 2004.
The Official Journal of the European Union (Official Journal), the authoritative reference for European legislation, is the flagship publication of the Publications Office. The contracts cover the production of the two connected series of the Official Journal * the L series (legislation) and the C series (Information and Notices) * the number of linguistic versions of which will increase from 11 to 20 following the enlargement of the European Union. The relevant call for tender was published in the Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union (OJ S) of 23 April 2003
Within the framework of the tender procedure, the Publications Office wished to ensure a maximum of competition by publishing an advertisement in the most important daily newspapers of the Member States and accession countries. The call for tender created the biggest demand for specification documents to date: 171 requests from 25 countries. In total, the Office received 100 offers (all lots included) from 19 companies
The different types of work were divided into lots, of which 10 are covered by the contracts signed today. Each lot is the subject of a particular contract, with the exception of lots 3 and 4 which are covered by a "cascaded" multiple framework contract. A brief summary of the subject of each lot, as well as the name(s) of the selected company(ies) is included in the press folder. The selected companies are the following (in alphabetical order): AIS (F), Guyot (B), Imprimerie Centrale (L), Jouve (F), Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag (D), SISEG (L) and SZ/Euroscript (D/L).
The texts published in the Official Journal constitute the result of successive stages of the European legislative process or contain important information or notices. They are currently published in the 11 official languages; the number of languages of publication will leap to 20 from 1 May 2004, the date of the biggest enlargement so far of the European Union.
The publication of the Official Journal imposes certain technical, linguistic and time constraints that demand great expertise and a specialised production set-up on the part of the companies involved in the work..
On the technical side, the Office took the opportunity offered by the renewal of the framework contract to adapt its production system in line with the most recent developments in technology, in particular moving from SGML to XML standards.
By way of information, concerning the volumes produced in 2003, those of the daily Official Journal L series in 11 language versions (published from Tuesday to Saturday) totalled approximately 250 000 pages and those of the daily C series in 11 language versions reached around 300 000 pages.
These figures demonstrate the importance of the contracts, which represent, for the 10 lots and a duration of five years, a total value of some 140 million euro.
Best wishes
Ian
Ian Thomson
Executive Editor, KnowEurope
[http://www.knoweurope.net]
Manager, European Documentation Centre, Cardiff University
Information Consultant, Wales Euro Info Centre
President, European Information Association
Contact details:
European Documentation Centre
The Guest Building
PO Box 430
Cardiff University
Cardiff CF10 3XT
Tel: 029-2087-4262
Fax: 029-2087-4717
Email: [log in to unmask]
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