In order for interested parties to register their inventions in any of the 38 Signatory States of the Munich Convention (European Patent Convention) they should follow the procedure cited below:

European application filing at the offices of OBI (in one of the European Patent Office official languages which are English, French and German). OBI will then forward the application to The Hague where the search report is prepared. The application is then published, a substantive examination conducted and the European Patent issued.
The rights granted by the European Patent are acquired and remain in effect only when the relevant fees have been paid to individual national offices.