CP violation in the lepton sector with Majorana neutrinos

We study CP violation in the lepton sector in extended models with right-handed neutrinos, without and with left-right symmetry, and with arbitrary mass terms. We find the conditions which must be satisfied by the neutrino and charged lepton mass matrices for CP conservation. These constraints, which are independent of the choice of weak basis, are proven to be also sufficient in simple cases. This invariant formulation makes apparent the necessary requirements for CP violation, as well as the size of CP violating effects. As an example, we show that CP violation can be much larger in left-right symmetric models than in models with only additional right-handed neutrinos, {\it i.e.}, without right-handed currents.