The dataset contains 142.036 EU laws - almost the entire corpus of the EU's digitally available legal acts passed between 1952 - 2019. It encompasses the full texts of these legal documents, providing researchers and analysts with extensive material for legal, historical, and policy-related studies. The dataset covers the three types of legally binding acts passed by the EU institutions: 102.304 regulations, 4.070 directives, 35.798 decisions in English language. The dataset was scraped from the official EU legal database (Eur-lex.eu) and transformed in machine-readable CSV format with the programming languages R and Python. It was collected by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) for the TRIGGER project (https://trigger-project.eu/). We hope that it will facilitate future quantitative and computational research on the EU. Covering EU legal acts from the year 1952 up to August 2019, this dataset provides a historical perspective on the evolution of EU legislation over nearly seven decades. It has a size of 1,5 GB.
Publications Citing This Dataset:
Zbiral, R., Princen, S., & Smekal, H. (2023). Differentiation through flexibility in implementation: Strategic and substantive uses of discretion in EU directives. European Union Politics, 24(1), 102-120. https://doi.org/10.1177/14651165221126072 Ünal, S. & Yilmaz, F. (2021). World equity markets and COVID-19: Immediate response and recovery prospects. Research in International Business and Finance, 56 (4).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2020.101349.
Variables:
Name
Description
Act_amends
CELEX number of the old act amended by the new act (see detail on CELEX below)
Act_cites
CELEX number of other acts cited by the act
Act_name
Full name of act
act_raw_text
The full raw text of the act in one string. Mostly includes: title, recitals, legal articles and annex. Please note that the texts of older laws is not always clean.
Additional_info
Additional information
Amends_links
link to previous act which is amended by the new act
Authors
name of the act's authors
CELEX
unique CELEX identifier of the act.
Cites_links
link to other acts, cited by the act
Date_document
Date of the document. The eur-lex.eu website does not provide an explanation of which exact date in the legislative process this represents. The dataset ranges from 1952 to August 2019.
Date_publication
Date the document was published
ELI_link
European Legislation Identifier (ELI) link to the act.
EUROVOC
A group of EuroVoc keywords associated with the act.
Eurlex_link
Link to act on eur-lex.europa.eu website.
First_entry_into_force
Date when act first entered into force
Legal_basis_celex
The CELEX number of the act's legal basis
Oeil_link
Link to the European Parliament's Legislative Observatory (Oeil). Provides procedural information.
Procedure_number
Number of the legislative procedure leading to the act
Proposal_link
Link to the Commission proposal proceeding the act
Status
whether the act was in force at the time of scraping (August 2019). ("In Force" or "Not in Force")
Subject_matter
Group of keywords representing the subject matter of the act. Similar to EUROVOC, only less detailed, more abstract.
