European legislation identifier: Making EU laws easier to find and
reuse
The European Legislation Identifier (ELI)
[https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli-register/what_is_eli.html] is a
European initiative designed to make legislative documents easier to
access, share, and reuse across the European Union. The ELI providers
a standard way to identify and describe legal documents published at
both EU and national level. By assigning each legal act a unique web
identifier and consistent metadata, it helps users find and understand
legislation more easily, regardless of country or language. 

At its core, ELI is built on a simple idea: every piece of legislation
should be accessible through a stable and meaningful web link. The
links, known as Uniform Resource Identifiers, are supported by
structured metadata that describes key aspects of the legal text, such
as its type, date, and legal basis. The system follows four main
pillars, including identification, metadata, description, publication
and data synchronisation, which together ensure interoperability
between different legal systems. Today, ELI is implemented on EUR-Lex
and in several national legal publishing platforms on a voluntary
basis. 

ELI is crucial to ensure the advancement of open data in Europe. By
standardising how legislation is published online, it enables legal
information to be machine-readable and reusable across borders. This
improves transparency and allows researchers and public
administrations to build new services based on legal data. 

To explore how ELI works in practice, visit the EUR-Lex ELI help page
[https://eur-lex.europa.eu/content/help/eurlex-content/eli.html] and
discover examples of ELI-based legislation. You can also learn more
about its implementation and benefits through the ELI register on
EUR-lex. 

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or subscribe to our newsletter [https://data.europa.eu/en/newsletter].
You can also connect with other users through our collaboration
channel
[https://data.europa.eu/dashboard/en/community/collaboration-channel]. 


Publication Date/Time
2026-07-13T08:00:00+00:00
A common standard helps citizens and governments access legislation
across borders