An international (PCT) application for which the EPO acts as designated Office or elected Office and which has been accorded an international date of filing is deemed to be a European patent application. Where an international (PCT) search report is already available, this will take the place of the European search report. The Search Division will draw up a supplementary European search report or a declaration replacing it according to Rule 63 unless provided otherwise in decisions of the Administrative Council.

However, the Administrative Council decides under what conditions and to what extent the supplementary European search report is to be dispensed with. The following decisions have been taken:

For the applications mentioned under (iii) and (iv), the supplementary European search is carried out in all the search documentation of the EPO. It is left to the Search Division's judgement whether a limitation as to the search documents is chosen. No precise limits can at present be set to these supplementary searches since the documentation and search practice of these International Searching Authorities have not been fully harmonised in respect of the EPO. As a general rule, the EPO should avoid any superfluous work and duplication of work and should rely on the efficiency and quality of the international searches to the largest extent possible. The EPO as designated Office requests the International Searching Authority to supply, together with the international search report, copies of the documents cited therein (Art. 20(3) PCT, see also Rule 44.3(a) PCT). When documents are cited that are not in one of the official languages of the EPO and the Search Division needs a translation into one of these languages, it should provide this itself (e.g. a patent family member in an official language of the EPO or, alternatively, an abstract of the document in an official language of the EPO, see VI, 6.2), unless it is able to obtain it from any other source, e.g. the applicant or the International Searching Authority.

The European grant procedure, including the supplementary search, is to be based on the application documents as specified by the applicant when the application enters the European phase (Rule 159(1)(b)). Alternatively, if, within a non-extendable period of one month as from notification of a communication pursuant to Rule 161, the applicant has amended the application, the application as amended serves as the basis for the supplementary search (see also XII, 2).