Source: EURLEX
Language: en
Format: md

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| 26.10.2012 | EN | Official Journal of the European Union | C 325/3 |

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Council conclusions inviting the introduction of the European Legislation Identifier (ELI)

(2012/C 325/02)

I.   INTRODUCTION

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|  | 1. | Article 67(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union provides for the constitution of an area of freedom, security and justice with respect for fundamental rights and the different legal systems and traditions of the Member States. |

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|  | 2. | A European area of freedom, security and justice in which judicial cooperation can take place requires not only knowledge of European law, but in particular mutual knowledge of the legal systems of other Member States, including national legislation. |

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|  | 3. | The e-Law formation of the Working Party on e-Law is competent in matters of developments regarding the legal databases and information systems managed by the Publications Office of the European Union[(1)](#ntr1-C_2012325EN.01000301-E0001). |

II.   IDENTIFICATION OF THE NEEDS

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|  | 4. | The EUR-Lex and N-Lex portals should fulfil the objective of providing access to information about the EU and Member States’ legal systems and should serve as a useful tool for citizens, legal professionals as well as Member States’ authorities. |

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|  | 5. | Knowledge on the substance and application of European Union law cannot be solely acquired from EU legal sources, but also from national sources, in particular from national legislation implementing European Union law. |

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|  | 6. | The process of cooperation within the European Union has increased the need to identify and exchange legal information originating from regional and national authorities at the European level. This need is partially met by digitally available legal information and the widespread use of the internet. However, the exchange of legal information is greatly limited by the differences that exist in the various national legal systems, as well as the differences in their technical systems used to store and display legislation through their respective websites. This hampers the interoperability between the information systems of national and European institutions, despite the increased availability of documents in electronic format. |

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|  | 7. | The use of ELI could help overcoming these problems. Using unique identifiers and structured metadata in referencing national legislation in Official Journals and Legal Gazettes, if Member States so decide, would allow effective, user-friendly and faster search and exchange of information, as well as efficient search mechanisms for legislators, judges, legal professionals and citizens. |

III.   IDENTIFICATION OF SOLUTIONS

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|  | 8. | In line with the principle of proportionality and the principle of decentralisation, each Member State should continue to operate its own national Official Journals and Legal Gazettes in the way they prefer. |

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|  | 9. | However, in order to facilitate the further development of interlinked national legislations and to serve legal professionals and citizens in their use of these databases, a common system for the identification of legislation and its metadata is regarded as useful. Such a common standard is compatible with the principles outlined in the previous paragraph. |

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|  | 10. | For the identification of legislation, a unique identifier should be used which is recognizable, readable and understandable by both humans and computers, and which is compatible with existing technological standards. In addition, ELI proposes a set of metadata elements to describe legislation in compliance with a recommended ontology. The European Legislation Identifier (ELI) should guarantee a cost-effective public access to reliable and up-to-date legislation. Benefiting from the emerging architecture of the semantic web, which enables information to be directly processed by computers and humans alike, ELI would allow a greater and faster exchange of data by enabling an automatic and efficient exchange of information. |

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|  | 11. | ELI should give the Member States and the European Union a flexible, self-documenting, consistent and unique way to reference legislation across different legal systems. ELI URIs uniquely identify in a stable way each legislative act across the European Union, while at the same time taking into account the specificities of national legal systems. |

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|  | 12. | ELI takes into account not only the complexity and specificity of regional, national and European legislative systems, but also changes in legal resources (e.g. consolidations, repealed acts etc.). It is designed to work seamlessly on top of existing systems using structured data and can be taken forward by Member States at their own pace. |

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|  | 13. | The European Case Law Identifier (ECLI)[(2)](#ntr2-C_2012325EN.01000301-E0002), applicable on a voluntary basis, already provides a European system for the identification of case-law. ELI identifies legislative texts which have different and more complex characteristics, and the two systems are complementary. |

IV.   CONCLUSION

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|  | 14. | The Council welcomes the initiative of a number of Member States to develop, on a voluntary basis at the national level, the European Legislation Identifier (hereinafter referred to as ELI). |

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|  | 15. | Noting that each element of ELI (i.e. unique identifiers, metadata and ontology) as set out in the Annex is subject to voluntary, gradual and optional introduction, the Council invites the Member States who decide to introduce ELI, and on a voluntary basis, to:   |  |  | | --- | --- | | (a) | Apply ELI to pieces of national legislation which can be found in national Official Journals, Legal Gazettes or databases operated by Member States; |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | (b) | the way they see technically most feasible, provide pieces of national legislation, which are published in national Official Journals, Legal Gazettes or made available in their databases, with:   |  |  | | --- | --- | | (a) | a unique identifier, based on a template using some or all of the components set out in paragraph 1 of the Annex; |  |  |  | | --- | --- | | (b) | some of the metadata and ontology as set out in paragraph 2 of the Annex; | |  |  |  | | --- | --- | | (c) | appoint a national ELI coordinator as described in paragraph 3.1 of the Annex; |  |  |  | | --- | --- | | (d) | share and disseminate information on ELI; |  |  |  | | --- | --- | | (e) | discuss each year in the Council Working Party on the progress made with the introduction of ELI and metadata for national legislation. | |

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|  | 16. | Noting that each element of ELI (i.e. unique identifiers, metadata and ontology) as set out in the Annex is subject to voluntary, gradual and optional introduction, the following recommendations would apply:   |  |  | | --- | --- | | (a) | ELI should be applied to European Union legislation which can be found in the Official Journal of the European Union and the EUR-Lex portal operated by the Publications Office of the European Union; |  |  |  | | --- | --- | | (b) | Therefore, the Publications Office of the European Union should, acting in accordance with Decision 2009/496/EC[(3)](#ntr3-C_2012325EN.01000301-E0003), integrate ELI as a part of the EUR-Lex portal, as described in paragraph 4 of the Annex; |  |  |  | | --- | --- | | (c) | The Publications Office of the European Union could host and maintain on its EUR-Lex portal the register of formal descriptions of Member States’ URI schemes, the referenced authority tables together with the ELI ontology, as well as useful information. | |

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|  | 17. | Apart from Member States, candidate countries and Lugano States[(4)](#ntr4-C_2012325EN.01000301-E0004) and others are encouraged to use the ELI-system. |

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