The international publication of a Euro-PCT application in an official language of the European Patent Office takes the place of publication of the European patent application and will be mentioned in the European Patent Bulletin. If the international publication of the Euro-PCT application is in another language, a translation into one of the official languages must be filed with the EPO within 31 months of the priority date (Art. 22(1) PCT and Rule 159(1)(a)), see E‑IX, 2.1.3. The EPO will publish the translation of the application submitted by the applicant upon entry into the European phase. In that case the provisional protection is, subject to Art. 67(2) and (3), only effective as from the date of publication of the translation by the EPO.[Art. 153(3); Art. 153(4); Rule 159; Art. 67; ]

The translation of the international application is published together with the bibliographic data as an A document and includes all documents that were part of the international publication as originally published:

The mandatory translation of the annexes to the IPER and any amendments to the application documents filed on or after entry into the European phase are not published.

Pursuant to Art. 153(6), the international search report takes the place of the European search report. Once the supplementary European search report has been drawn up, this will be mentioned in the European Patent Bulletin. The supplementary search report itself is not published but is available via file inspection (see A‑XI, 2.2).

If the translation is not supplied, the application is to be deemed withdrawn (see E‑IX, 2.1.3). Furthermore, in this case, the application which has been published under the PCT is not considered as comprised in the state of the art in accordance with Art. 54(3) (see G‑IV, 5.2).[Rule 160(1); ]