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ELI - European Legislation Identifier

Help

The ELI makes legislation that is officially published across Europe available online in a standardised format, so that it can be accessed, exchanged and reused across borders.

ELIs use HTTP URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers), which can be read by both humans and computers. They also propose a set of metadata elements to describe legislation and include a specific language for exchanging legislation in a machine-readable format.

At EU level, ELIs are assigned to a wide range of legislation published in the L series (regulations, directives, decisions) of the Official Journal of the European Union and to consolidated acts.

From your personal account or ‘Customise shown information’, you can set your preferences so that the ELI appears in the results. It is always displayed on the document page.

ELIs have also been deployed in a number of national legislation publishing systems (see the list). They are implemented by EU Member States on a voluntary basis.

Examples

The simplest type of ELI structure is this:
http://data.europa.eu/eli/{typeOfDocument}/{yearOfAdoption}/{numberOfDocument}/oj

The ELI for Decision 2009/496/EC is http://data.europa.eu/eli/dec/2009/496/oj​

The ELI for http://data.europa.eu/eli/dec/2009/496​ provides access to the most recent consolidated version of this act. If there is no consolidated version, you access the act as it was published in the Official Journal.

For more information on ELI implementation at national and EU level, see the ELI register pages and a summary of Council conclusions on the introduction of the ELI.