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EUR-Lex Scraper - EU Regulations, Directives & Case Law

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EUR-Lex Scraper - EU Regulations, Directives & Case Law

Extract EU legislative documents from EUR-Lex — the official database of European Union law. Returns structured records for regulations, directives, decisions, judgments, treaties, and proposals with CELEX IDs, ELI URIs, EuroVoc subject classifications, amendment trees, legal basis references, national transpositions, and full-text/PDF/XML URLs.

Built for LegalTech platforms, compliance teams, regulatory researchers, and AI training pipelines that need structured access to EU legal data at scale.

What It Does

The scraper queries the EUR-Lex SPARQL endpoint (publications.europa.eu/webapi/rdf/sparql) using the EU Cellar Common Data Model. Six query modes let you target exactly the documents you need:

Mode Use case
By Keyword Full-text search across legislation titles
By CELEX ID Fetch a single document by its canonical EU identifier
By EuroVoc Subject All legislation tagged with a specific EuroVoc concept
By Date Range All acts published between two dates
By Document Type Filter by regulation, directive, decision, judgment, etc.
Recent Acts Legislation published in the last N days

Output Fields

Field Description
celex_id CELEX number — canonical EU document identifier (e.g. 32024R1689)
eli_uri European Legislation Identifier URI
cellar_uri Cellar repository URI for this work
document_type Resource type code (REG, DIR, DEC, JU, OPIN, etc.)
title Full official title in English
publication_date Date of publication in the Official Journal (ISO 8601)
effective_date Date the act enters into force (ISO 8601)
end_validity_date Date the act ceases to be valid / is repealed (ISO 8601)
subject_matter EuroVoc subject labels (comma-separated)
legal_basis CELEX IDs of treaty articles used as legal basis
amends CELEX IDs of acts this document amends
amended_by CELEX IDs of acts that amend this document
national_transpositions CELEX IDs of national implementing measures (optional, slower)
language_versions ISO language codes available in EUR-Lex (e.g. en,de,fr)
full_text_url EUR-Lex HTML full-text URL
pdf_url EUR-Lex PDF URL
xml_url EUR-Lex XML (Formex 4) URL

Input Configuration

Required

  • Query Mode (mode) — One of: by_keyword, by_celex_id, by_eurovoc_subject, by_date_range, by_document_type, recent_acts
  • Max Items (maxItems) — Maximum number of records to return (1–50,000)

Optional

  • Search Query / CELEX ID / EuroVoc Subject (query) — Keyword(s) for by_keyword; CELEX number for by_celex_id; EuroVoc label for by_eurovoc_subject
  • Document Type Filter (documentType) — Narrow results to: Regulation, Directive, Decision, Opinion, Judgment, Proposal (Regulation), Proposal (Directive), Treaty
  • Date From / Date To (dateFrom, dateTo) — Publication date range for by_date_range mode (format: YYYY-MM-DD)
  • Lookback Days (lookbackDays) — Days to look back for recent_acts mode (1–365, default: 30)
  • Include Amendment Tree (includeAmendments) — Resolve amends / amended_by relationships (default: true)
  • Include National Transpositions (includeTranspositions) — Fetch national implementing measures — one extra SPARQL call per document, slower (default: false)

Example Inputs

Find AI Act and related regulations:

{
  "mode": "by_keyword",
  "query": "artificial intelligence",
  "documentType": "REG",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Fetch the AI Act by CELEX ID:

{
  "mode": "by_celex_id",
  "query": "32024R1689",
  "maxItems": 1
}

Recent regulations from the last 30 days:

{
  "mode": "recent_acts",
  "lookbackDays": 30,
  "documentType": "REG",
  "maxItems": 100
}

All data governance legislation:

{
  "mode": "by_date_range",
  "dateFrom": "2020-01-01",
  "dateTo": "2025-12-31",
  "query": "data governance",
  "maxItems": 500
}

Performance Notes

  • The SPARQL endpoint is open — no proxy or authentication required.
  • Each document requires two SPARQL calls (discovery + enrichment). National transpositions add a third call per document.
  • For large result sets (>1,000), allow sufficient timeout. The actor default is 4 hours.
  • Rate limiting is applied automatically between queries to respect the endpoint.

Data Source

All data is sourced directly from the EUR-Lex SPARQL endpoint — the authoritative EU Cellar linked data repository maintained by the Publications Office of the European Union. Data is structured using the Common Data Model (CDM) ontology.

EUR-Lex is an official EU website; its data is in the public domain under the EUR-Lex copyright notice.

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