The simplified acronym CE is instead used to identify Community laws that are regulations or directives.

The Regulations are the laws of the European Union and have immediate application throughout its territory from the moment of their publication in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJ).

Directives are laws of the European Union that do not have immediate application but require legislative measures of each Member State to be applied. Each Member State does not have an indefinite time to implement a directive and normally has to apply it within two years of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJ).