Zeitschrift fur Europarechtliche Studien

About Zeitschrift fur Europarechtliche Studien

Zeitschrift für Europarechtliche Studien — Journal Profile

Zeitschrift für Europarechtliche Studien (ZEuS) is a German law journal devoted to European integration, European law and international law, published since 1998 by the Europa-Institut, the law section of Saarland University in Saarbrücken, with the Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft of Baden-Baden as its publishing house. Its concept is deliberately wide: the journal addresses current developments and fundamental problems of European integration, European law and international law in their entire breadth, and it does so in two languages, German and English, which makes it one of the comparatively few continental European-law periodicals that a reader outside the German-speaking world can use directly. ZEuS appears quarterly. Since 1 January 2024 it has been a fully open-access journal, and it is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which records no article processing charge for it. Its print ISSN is 1435-439X and its online ISSN is 2942-3589. This profile sets out what the journal publishes, who edits it, how its peer review works, what its citation record looks like in the sources checked for this profile, and how an author submits work to it.

At a Glance

• Full title: Zeitschrift für Europarechtliche Studien
• Abbreviation: ZEuS
• Print ISSN: 1435-439X
• Online ISSN: 2942-3589
• Publisher: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, Baden-Baden, Germany
• Publishing institution: Europa-Institut, Law Section, Saarland University, Saarbrücken
• Country: Germany
• Languages: German and English
• Founded: 1998
• Frequency: Quarterly — four issues a year
• Open access: Fully open access since 1 January 2024; listed in DOAJ; no article processing charge recorded by DOAJ
• Peer review: Double anonymous peer review, per the publisher and DOAJ records
• Editors: Marc Bungenberg, Christian Calliess, Thomas Giegerich, Michael J. Hahn and Till Patrik Holterhus, per the Europa-Institut
• Editor-in-chief (managing editor): Dr Philipp Reinhold, per the Europa-Institut
• Fields: European integration, EU law, public international law

Scope: European and International Law in Full Breadth

The Europa-Institut describes the journal's concept as a wide one, and the description is accurate. ZEuS contributions deal with current and general problems in European integration as well as European and international law. In practice that means the journal is not confined to the internal law of the European institutions. A single recent issue — Year 2026, Issue 1, listed on the Europa-Institut website when this profile was checked — moves from EU law and commercial arbitration, through the area of freedom, security and justice as it affects children, the European Commission's powers in publishing harmonised standards under the new legislative framework with particular attention to the new artificial-intelligence regulation, and fair remuneration for solo self-employed persons under internal-market freedoms, to the coupling of new EU own resources with substantive policies and limitation periods in EU antitrust private enforcement. That spread, from constitutional questions to technical regulatory law, is the journal's normal register.

The DOAJ record for the journal gives its keywords as law, European integration, international law, Europe and European law, and classifies it under the subject heading Law of Europe. The OpenAlex source record, checked for this profile, maps the same territory from the citation side: its leading topics for the journal are European and international law studies, EU policy and governance, EU law and policy analysis, European law and migration, and World Trade Organization law. Authors should read those two lists together. ZEuS is a journal for work whose centre of gravity is the law of European integration — the treaties, the institutions, the internal market, external relations, and the interaction between European and national law — and for public international law work that speaks to that European audience. A purely domestic-law manuscript with no European or international dimension is outside its scope, however strong it may be.

Two features of the scope deserve emphasis. First, the journal consciously gives young academics and students a route into print alongside established scholars; the Europa-Institut states this as an explicit aim, and its call for papers repeats the encouragement to young scholars and practitioners. Second, speeches held at the Europa-Institut are published in ZEuS, which gives the journal a documentary function for the institute's lecture programme as well as a scholarly one. The journal has also published thematic special editions, among them the 2016 special edition on asylum and migration in Europe and the 2021 special edition marking seventy years of the Europa-Institut of Saarland University.

History and Standing

ZEuS has been published by the Europa-Institut since 1998, which means the journal is now in its third decade and has published for more than twenty-five years, as the institute's own call for papers notes. The Europa-Institut at Saarbrücken is one of the oldest university institutes in Germany devoted to European integration, and the journal grew out of its teaching and research programme in European law; the institute's postgraduate European law courses and the journal have always been closely linked. The founding editor was Professor Georg Ress, long the institute's director, who is credited on the journal's masthead as founding editor. Professor Torsten Stein, a later director of the institute, served among its editors until his death in 2024 and is still carried on the masthead in memoriam.

The journal's most important recent change is its move to open access. As of 1 January 2024, ZEuS transitioned to a fully open-access platform, with its first open-access issue launched in March 2024. The Europa-Institut explains the move in terms of worldwide accessibility, enhanced visibility for authors, and faster scholarly collaboration. For a German-language law journal, whose natural readership has historically been limited by subscription lists in university libraries, that change matters: the full text of current ZEuS contributions is now reachable through the Nomos eLibrary without a paywall, and the DOAJ listing confirms the journal's open-access status, its publisher, and its identifiers. DOAJ also records Portico as its preservation service.

On indexing, the Europa-Institut's call for papers states that ZEuS is indexed in Scopus and in the process of being indexed in the Web of Science. Readers should treat that as the journal's own statement at the time of checking; indexing rosters change, and anyone whose institution requires a specific database listing should confirm the current position in that database before submitting. The journal's presence in Scopus is also what places it in the SCImago rankings for the Law category, where its citation figures are modest, as is normal for a specialised, partly German-language law periodical: law journals in a national language cite and are cited within a smaller community than English-language generalist titles, and their metrics should be read with that context in mind.

Editorial Leadership

The journal's editors, as listed by the Europa-Institut, are Professor Marc Bungenberg of Saarland University, Professor Christian Calliess of the Free University of Berlin, Professor Thomas Giegerich of Saarland University, Professor Michael J. Hahn of the World Trade Institute in Berne, and Professor Till Patrik Holterhus of Saarland University. The editor-in-chief, who runs the editorial office, is Dr Philipp Reinhold of Saarland University. The editorial office sits at the Europa-Institut der Universität des Saarlandes, Sektion Rechtswissenschaft, Postfach 15 11 50, 66041 Saarbrücken, and manuscripts and correspondence go to the journal's editorial e-mail address at the institute.

Beyond the editors, the journal carries a broad editorial board whose membership, as published by the institute, spans universities and institutions in Germany, Australia, Belgium, Israel, the Netherlands, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Austria, Scotland and Luxembourg, including members based at the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the European Commission's trade directorate, NATO headquarters and the German Bundestag. That composition matches the journal's dual academic-and-practitioner readership: ZEuS wants contributions from the academy and from legal practice, and its board is built accordingly. The Europa-Institut is equally explicit about how manuscripts are assessed: contributions are examined through an extensive and thorough evaluation procedure, carried out independently by two members of the editorial team, and the publisher's and DOAJ's records describe the process as double anonymous peer review.

Metrics and Citation Record

Figures in this section are attributed to the source they came from, because different databases count a partly German-language law journal very differently. OpenAlex, whose source record for the journal (S4210226342) resolves from its print ISSN, records 846 works and 868 citations for ZEuS, with an h-index of 14 and a two-year mean citedness of about 0.35, at the time of checking. OpenAlex's yearly counts show a steady quarterly output in recent years — 53 works recorded for 2022, 38 for 2023, 31 for 2024 and 40 for 2025 — which is consistent with a quarterly journal publishing a moderate number of substantial articles per issue rather than a high-volume outlet. OpenAlex also marks the source as in DOAJ and open access, which matches the journal's own account of its 2024 transition.

Secondary reporting derived from SCImago's Scopus-based data has put the journal's SCImago Journal Rank at 0.184 for 2025 with an h-index of 6 on that database's counting, while earlier SCImago listings placed it in the Law category with lower values. The honest summary is that ZEuS is a small-circulation specialist journal by citation measures: its importance to its field is a function of who reads it — European-law academics, practitioners, and the Saarbrücken institute's network — rather than of raw citation totals. Authors weighing it against large English-language titles should compare like with like: for a German-language or bilingual contribution on EU law, ZEuS offers a readership that actually works in that language and subject, an open-access platform since 2024, and no author charge recorded by DOAJ. Its Journal Impact Factor position, where reported by commercial trackers, has been low in absolute terms, and no verified current impact-factor figure from the publisher was found for this profile, so none is stated here.

Abstracting and Indexing

Per the Europa-Institut, ZEuS is indexed in Scopus and is in the process of being indexed in the Web of Science. It is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, which is itself a widely used discovery route for open-access content, and its articles are carried on the Nomos eLibrary platform, the publisher's full-text library for its journals and books. DOAJ records Portico as the journal's digital preservation service. The complete archive of published issues is linked from the Europa-Institut website to the publisher's platform. No listing in PubMed or other medical databases applies to this law journal, and any third-party page claiming additional indexing for ZEuS should be checked against the databases themselves before being relied on.

How to Submit

Submission is by e-mail. The Europa-Institut instructs authors to send manuscripts directly, as Word documents, to the editorial office at zeus@europainstitut.de; a postal route on CD to the Saarbrücken editorial office is also described on the institute's page, but e-mail is plainly the working channel. The journal's call for papers adds the practical parameters: manuscripts may be written in English or German, should run to no more than 12,000 words, and go through double-blind peer review, which the institute puts at around six weeks, before the editorial board takes the publication decision. The publisher issues detailed author guidelines — the current ZEuS guidelines for authors are published by Nomos as a PDF — which set the citation style for monographs, edited volumes, commentaries, journal articles, official-journal materials, opinions of advocates general, and EU legal acts, and authors should format references to that house style from the start rather than retrofitting them.

On acceptance, the institute's terms state that the editors acquire the rights needed for reproduction and internet publication, and that contributions reflect the authors' personal opinions rather than those of the editorial staff. Unsolicited manuscripts are not returned. On charges, DOAJ records that the journal has no article processing charge, which fits its society-and-institute publishing model: this is a journal carried by its institute and publisher, not by author fees. Subscription pricing for the print edition is a matter for the publisher's website; the open-access online edition is free to read.

Who Should Publish Here?

ZEuS suits three kinds of author. The first is the European-law scholar — established or early-career — with a substantial article on EU law, European integration or public international law who wants it read by the German-speaking European-law community and, since the open-access move, by anyone else who finds it. The second is the practitioner: officials, judges' clerks, and lawyers working on European questions, whom the journal explicitly welcomes and whose topical commentaries on current developments are part of its format. The third is the young academic or advanced student with a strong piece of work; few journals of this standing state as plainly as ZEuS does that giving younger scholars a publication medium is part of their purpose, and its review timetable — around six weeks for the double-blind review, per the institute — is short by law-journal standards. Authors whose work needs a large Anglophone generalist audience, or whose institutions count only Web of Science journal quartiles, should check the journal's current indexing position first and weigh alternatives; authors whose work is in German, or bilingual in ambition, will find ZEuS one of the natural homes for it.

Similar Journals

Readers and authors comparing ZEuS with neighbouring titles usually look at other European-law periodicals. Europarecht, also published by Nomos, is a distinct journal with its own ISSNs (0531-2485 and 2942-3198) and a longer history; it is not the same publication as ZEuS, and the two should not be confused in citations. Other titles in the same conversation include the European Law Review, the Common Market Law Review, the European Constitutional Law Review, the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law, and the German Law Journal. Each differs in language, publisher and citation profile; ZEuS's distinguishing combination is its Saarbrücken institute base, its German-English bilingualism, its openness to practitioners and younger scholars, and, since 2024, full open access without an author charge.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the ISSN of Zeitschrift für Europarechtliche Studien?
Its print ISSN is 1435-439X and its online ISSN is 2942-3589, as recorded by the publisher and by DOAJ.

Who publishes ZEuS?
The journal is published by the Europa-Institut, the law section of Saarland University, and its publishing house is the Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft in Baden-Baden. An earlier JournalsWorld record showed a numeric code in place of the publisher's name; the publisher is Nomos, as the institute and DOAJ both confirm.

Is ZEuS open access?
Yes. The journal moved to a fully open-access platform on 1 January 2024, is listed in DOAJ, and DOAJ records no article processing charge for it.

Is ZEuS peer-reviewed?
Yes. The Europa-Institut describes an extensive evaluation procedure conducted independently by two members of the editorial team, and the publisher and DOAJ describe the process as double anonymous peer review.

What languages can I submit in?
German or English. The journal publishes in both languages.

How long may a manuscript be, and how long does review take?
The institute's call for papers sets a maximum of 12,000 words and puts the double-blind review at around six weeks.

Is ZEuS indexed in Scopus?
The Europa-Institut states that the journal is indexed in Scopus and in the process of being indexed in the Web of Science; check the database itself for the current position before relying on it for institutional purposes.

How often does ZEuS appear?
Quarterly. The current issue listed by the institute at checking time was Year 2026, Issue 1.

Sources and Verification

This profile was built from the Europa-Institut's own ZEuS pages (history, editors, editorial office, submission instructions, open-access announcement and call for papers), the Nomos eLibrary bibliographic record for the journal (ISSN-Print 1435-439X, ISSN-Online 2942-3589, publisher Nomos, Baden-Baden), the DOAJ record for ISSN 1435-439X (publisher Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, no article processing charge, double anonymous peer review, Portico preservation), and the OpenAlex source record S4210226342 resolved from the print ISSN (846 works, 868 citations, h-index 14, two-year mean citedness about 0.35, at checking time). SCImago-derived figures are described as secondary reporting in the metrics section. The stored JournalsWorld record for this post gave the publisher as a numeric code and a coverage window beginning in 2019; both are corrected by the sources above — the publisher is Nomos and the journal has appeared since 1998 — and those corrections are flagged for the corrections pass.