Abstract. The neutrinoless double beta decay is analyzed using a general Lorentz invariant effective Lagrangian for various decaying nuclei of current experimental interest: 76 Ge, 82 Se, 100 Mo, 130 Te, and 136 Xe. We work out the half-lives and angular correlation coefficients of the outgoing electrons in several scenarios for new physics: the left-right symmetric models, the R-parity-violating SUSY and models with leptoquarks. The theoretical uncertainty in the nuclear matrix elements is discussed.