Fields covered

The Eurovoc thesaurus covers all the activity fields of the European institutions:

• POLITICS
• INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
• EUROPEAN UNION
• LAW
• ECONOMICS
• TRADE
• FINANCE
• SOCIAL QUESTIONS
• EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATIONS
• SCIENCE
• BUSINESS AND COMPETITION
• EMPLOYMENT AND WORKING CONDITIONS
• TRANSPORT
• ENVIRONMENT
• AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES
• AGRI-FOODSTUFFS
• PRODUCTION, TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH
• ENERGY
• INDUSTRY
• GEOGRAPHY
• INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS

Some fields are more highly developed than others because they are more closely related to the EU’s centres of interest. Thus, for example, the names of the regions of each EU Member State are in Eurovoc but not those of third countries.

The grouping of descriptors into fields is to a certain extent arbitrary. One of Eurovoc’s distinctive features is the limitation of polyhierarchy. Descriptors which could fit into two or more subject fields are thus generally assigned only to the field which seems the most natural for users, in order to facilitate the management of the thesaurus and limit its volume....