In general, EU Commission documents are named COM-documents. European Parliament documents are named PE-documents. The Committee of the Region uses CDR as a designation and the Social and Economic Committee CES.
Usually, the documents also give information about the legislative procedures: ACC for agreement, AVC for assent, COD for co-decision, CNB for consultation of ECB, CNS for consultation and SYN for co-operation.
Final documents can be found in the Eur-Lex database. Preparatory documents can be found in the Pre-Lex database. They are classified as such:
| Type | Content | Availability |
| 1,2,3,4,5 | Old European Parliament documents | |
| A2,A3,A4,A5 | Reports adopted in Parliamentary committee | Since 1994 |
| B4,B5 | Documents for European Parliament plenary session | |
| BULL | Bulletin of the European Union | Since 1994 |
| C | Commission document relating to official acts within the Commission's own areas of responsibility ("autonomous acts"). Some of these are sent to the Council or Parliament for information, in which case they are cited in PreLex. | |
| C2,C3,C4, C5 | Documents from the other institutions, distributed by the European Parliament | |
| COR | Opinion of the Committee of the Regions | |
| CES-CESE | Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee | Since September 1999 |
| COM | Commission documents for the other institutions (legislative proposals, communications, reports, etc.) | All the official electronic texts of COM documents are available for the years since 1999 |
| CSE | Old documents for the European Council | |
| IP | Commission press releases | Since 1998 |
| JO | Official Journal | Since 1998 |
| JO C | Official Journal C series | Since 1998 |
| JO C E | Official Journal C electronic | Since 1998 |
| JO L | Official Journal L series | Since 1998 |
| LET | Old Commission documents ("Letter") sent to the Council without annexes or with an unnumbered document | |
| PE | Single number given to all European Parliament documents | |
| PRES | Council press release | Since 1998 |
| SEC | Miscellaneous Commission documents | |
| TA | European Parliament texts (texts adopted) |