1. EU Datathon : National and EU law using ELI
Thomas Francart –

2. ELI History European Legislation Identifier
Work started in “European Forum of Official Gazettes”
Conclusions of the EU Council
“European Legislation Identifier (ELI)” Published in the Official Journal of the European Union on October 26th 2012, “2012/C 325/02”
EU funding for the project starting 2014

3. ELI Stakeholders and documentation (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli)

4. 1. Identifiers 2. Metadata Browse Describe Link Identify
legislation
Browse
2. Metadata
Describe
legislation
Link
3. Content structure ? Not in scope of ELI !

5. ELI proposes URI components that can be selected and arranged in any order to define your own URI structure.

6. What are the datasets ?
Datasets available under the « ELI » group on the ODP :
EU (Eur-Lex)
Finland
Luxembourg
Ireland
Denmark
Soon : Portugal
Soon : Italy
Others

7. How were the datasets created ?
ELI publishers embed structured metadata in their webpages, using RDFa
Volunteer ELI publishers have submitted their list of ELI URIs
The pages were fetched and parsed to extract structured data and aggregate it into a dataset
Luxembourg & Finland directly provided their ELI datasets

8. RDFa : metadata « for machines »

9. Sample ELI list http://www.retsinformation.dk/eli/fob/1989/100 …

10. Which information can be found ?
ELI URIs of country legislation in scope of ELI
(Countries usually apply ELI on a subset of their legislation)
Type of act
Law, decree, decision, etc… (depending on jurisdiction)
Dates :
… of signature/decision
… of publication
… of entry into force / no longer in force
Keywords
Titles
Can be multilingual
Links to other acts (« Legal graph »)
Cites, changes, corrects, repeals, consolidates, etc.
Links to transposed EU legislation
Pointers to content (XHTML, PDF, etc.) files
Others… refer to ELI model :

11. Which file formats ?
Datasets are provided in RDF (semantic web data format)
Usually in 2 variants (containing same data) :
Turtle syntax
RDF/XML syntax
The list of ELI URIs is also available for most datasets

12. How to parse/use the data ?
Use an RDF API
Java : Eclipse RDF4J
Java : Apache Jena
Python : RDFLib
PHP : EasyRDF
C : librdf …
Or use an RDF database (triplestore)
Or (but bad practice) use an XSLT to parse the RDF/XML variant
Or … be creative :-)

13. « List all EU Directives with their english title, ordered by date »
How to query the data ?
Navigate the data graph using an API…
… or issue SPARQL queries
« List all EU Directives with their english title, ordered by date »
PREFIX eli: <
PREFIX lang: <
SELECT ?directive ?title ?date
WHERE {
?directive a eli:LegalResource .
?directive eli:type_document < .
?directive eli:date_document ?date .
?directive eli:is_realized_by ?expression .
?expression eli:language lang:ENG .
?expression eli:title ?title .
} ORDER BY ?date

14. Layers of ELI description (FRBR)
A specific legislation, independently of one of its « version » or language
Directive 80/181/CEE
A specific (temporal) version of this legislation, independently of its language
OJ version or consolidated version
A specific linguistic variant of this version of the legislation
An english translation
A specific file format for given language of given version of this legislation
Signed PDF vs. HTML

15. in its original OJ version
1 Legal Resource
in its original OJ version
23 Legal Expressions
3 Formats for each expressions

16. Think in graph !
(it helps)

17. LegalResource LegalExpression Format (Abstract) LegalResource
.../eli/dir/2013/37
Has multiple versions in
.../eli/dir/2013/37/oj
LegalResource
Can be expressed in various
.../eli/dir/2013/37/oj/deu
LegalExpression
Can be published in various
.../eli/dir/2013/37/oj/deu/pdf
Format
Is expressed in concrete files
Each conceptual level is identified with a URI
using extra components.

18. Different levels of description
Content
Keywords, dates, links, author, etc.
LegalResource
Can be expressed in various
Text/signs
Title, language, etc.
LegalExpression
Can be published in various
File
media type, publisher, legal value, etc.
Format
Each level of abstraction will be associated with specific metadata.

19. Link legal texts (Luxembourg)
Project
idParlement:60720
cites
Law
/loi/1988/12/13/n1
related_to
cites
Directive
1991/0440
basis_for
Reglementation
/rgd/2015/07/24/n3
Law
/loi/2014/21/19/n11
SEQ:A
cited_by
Law
/loi/2015/07/30/n1
changes
Law
/loi/2010/12/17/n2
changes
changed_by
Law
/loi/2009/05/05/n8
changes
Law
../loi/1860/12/04/n1
Law
/loi/2015/05/31/n1
Creating a graph of legislation.

20. Detailled ELI ontology diagrams

21. Legend V1.1 LegalResource Class defined in the model skos:Concept
Class defined in another ontology
LegalResource
date_document
Literal properties (strings, integer, float, dates, booleans, xsd:anyURI, etc.) on a class
physicalMedium (*)
AnnotationProperty, that can take as a value either a literal or a URI
Class/subclass relationship (rdfs:subclassOf)
is_about
Property linking 2 ressources
has_legalresource [1..*]
Min and max cardinalities on a property :
[1] one and only one value, [1..*] at least one value. If nothing is written, assume [0..*], no restriction.
Object property and its inverse property
based_on / basis_for
V1.1

22. Is expressed in concrete files
ELI « backbone »
Can contain other
LegalResource
Can be expressed in various
LegalExpression
Can be published in various
Format
Is expressed in concrete files

23. LegalResourceSubdivision
rdac:Work
owl:Thing
LegalResource
id_local
uri_schema
has_part / is_part_of
has_member / is_member_of
rdac:Expression
is_realized_by / realizes [1..*]
LegalExpression
id_local
LegalResourceSubdivision
rdac:Manifestion
is_embodied_by / embodies
Format
id_local
is_exemplified_by
owl:Thing
« ELI part 1 » : backbone
V1.1

24. « ELI part 2 » : LegalResource level V1.1
skos:Concept
related_to
cites / cites_by
owl:Thing
version
Version
LegalResource Or
LegalExpression
number
description
version_date
first_date_entry_in_force
date_no_longer_in_force
date_applicability
relevant_for
jurisdiction
Admin.Area
in_force
InForce
changed_by / changes
consolidates / consolidated_by
commences / commenced_by
repeals / repealed_by
corrects / corrected_by*
amends / amended_by
type_document [1..*]
ResourceType
Agent
basis_for
transposes
passed_by
responsibility_of_agent
LegalResource
responsibility_of
date_document
date_publication
based_on
transposed_by
is_about
applies / applied_by
is_another_publication_of / has_another_publication
« ELI part 2 » : LegalResource level
V1.1
* : also applies to Format

25. « ELI part 3 » : LegalExpression level V1.1
skos:Concept
related_to
cites / cites_by
owl:Thing
version
Version
LegalResource Or
LegalExpression
number
description
version_date
first_date_entry_in_force
date_no_longer_in_force
date_applicability
relevant_for
Admin.Area
in_force
InForce
changed_by / changes
consolidates / consolidated_by
commences / commenced_by
repeals / repealed_by
corrects / corrected_by*
amends / amended_by
Language
language [1..*]
LegalExpression
title [1..*]
title_short
title_alternative
publisher
basis_for
transposes
based_on
transposed_by
LegalResource
« ELI part 3 » : LegalExpression level
V1.1

26. « ELI part 4 » : Format level V1.1
legal_value
skos:Concept
Format
rights
rightsholder
published_in
publisher
publishes /
published_in_format
publisher_agent
rightsholder_agent
licence
format [1..1]
Agent
owl:Thing
« ELI part 4 » : Format level
V1.1

27. V1.1 Property Range (class) Corresponding ELI scheme
Existing EU Publications Office table ?
type_document
eli:ResourceType
Eli:ResourceTypeTable -
relevant_for
eli:AdministrativeArea
Eli:AdministrativeAreaTable
Administrative Territorial Units (+ local extensions)
jurisdiction
passed_by
eli:Agent
n/a
responsibility_of_agent
publisher_agent
rightsholder_agent
is_about
skos:Concept
Eurovoc + values to be locally defined
in_force
eli:InForce
eli:InForceTable
ELI includes a value set (in force, not in force, partially in force). No local extensions needed.
language
eli:Language
No ELI scheme : referring to OPEU language scheme
language (no local extensions needed)
version
eli:Version
eli:VersionTable
None
legal_value
eli:LegalValue
eli:LegalValueTable
ELI includes a value set (unofficial, official > authoritative > definitive). No local extensions needed.
V1.1

28. Thomas Francart thomas.francart@sparna.fr
Thank you
Thomas Francart