EU legal acts are incorporated into the EEA Agreement by Decisions of the EEA Joint Committee (JCDs) which place acts into one of the Annexes or Protocols to the Agreement.
The process of incorporation is described in depth in the EEA webtool. To verify if an EU is incorporated into the EEA Agreement, use EEA-Lex. On EEA-Lex you can also access information about the Joint Committee Decision which incorporated a given EU act, including whether it has entered into force, and into which Annex or Protocol to the EEA Agreement it was placed, if there are any EEA specific adaptations and verify whether any amendments to the act have been incorporated.
While the rules are common, provisions of legal acts that are made part of the EEA Agreement may need to be adjusted for the purpose of the EEA Agreement. This may be necessary because the scope and the institutional set-up of the EEA Agreement differ in certain respects from the EU, or because of the specific situation of an EFTA State. Such adjustments are referred to as adaptations. To read a legal act in the EEA context, it is necessary to find out what adaptations may apply.
An adaptation to an act provides that the act shall be read or understood in a specific way for the purposes of the EEA Agreement. Adaptations are most commonly used to make an act fit within the framework of the EEA Agreement. More information about adaptations.
