Data
Microproduct Data Guideintermediate

EUR-Lex Cellar Legislation

Official EU legal acts and metadata from the Publications Office Cellar for building regulation lookup and EU-law change-monitoring tools.

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At a Glance

Difficulty
Intermediate — some data preparation helps
Size
Tiny · ≤0.05 GB
Formats
JSON, XML, RDF
Access
API
API Key
Not Required
Provider
Publications Office of the European Union
Updates
Daily
Last Verified
Aug 20, 2026
Source Type
Intergovernmental source
Data Terms
Publications Office of the EU legal notices / reuse principles
  • Python syntax checked

From Source to Product Signal

Test a Product Idea in Four Steps

Cellar stores EU legal acts behind EUR-Lex. Start with one well-known CELEX identifier and a one-row SPARQL lookup. Language versions and consolidations differ, and a Cellar work URI is not a national gazette entry.

1

Check the Setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • An internet connection
2

Access the Data

  1. 1.Read the Cellar overview and the Publications Office legal notices before querying.
  2. 2.Choose one CELEX identifier such as 32016R0679 and keep the query bounded with LIMIT 1.
  3. 3.Retain the work URI and document date with the retrieval timestamp.
Open Official Source
3

Run the Python Example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas requests

import pandas as pd
import requests

query = """
PREFIX cdm: <http://publications.europa.eu/ontology/cdm#>
SELECT ?work ?date WHERE {
  ?work cdm:resource_legal_id_celex "32016R0679"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string> ;
        cdm:work_date_document ?date .
}
LIMIT 1
"""
response = requests.get(
    "https://publications.europa.eu/webapi/rdf/sparql",
    params={
        "query": query,
        "format": "application/sparql-results+json",
    },
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()
bindings = pd.json_normalize(response.json()["results"]["bindings"])
bindings["retrieved_at_utc"] = pd.Timestamp.now(tz="UTC")
print(bindings)
4

Test a Useful Signal

Resolve one EU regulation by CELEX identifier

Test whether a Cellar lookup can power a bounded EU-act watch card.

  1. 01Confirm that the returned work URI matches CELEX 32016R0679 and keep the document date.
  2. 02Follow the work URI only for the English expression if you need a title.
  3. 03Explain that consolidations and language versions can differ and that Cellar is not a national official gazette.

Related Datasets

Dataset Details

Publications Office of the European Union is an intergovernmental source. Last verified 2026-08-20. Temporal coverage: Official Journal acts with Cellar metadata through current publications.

Geography

Europe

Formats

JSONXMLRDF

Provider

Publications Office of the European Union

Data Terms

Publications Office of the EU legal notices / reuse principles

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