Improving exchange of legislation data

What is this action about?

Under the article 17 of the Treaty on European Union, the European Commission shall oversee the application of Union law under the control of the Court of Justice of the EU. This monitoring task is entrusted to the Commission in its exclusive role as "guardian of the Treaties". The monitoring of the application of EU law involves both the Commission and EU countries working in close partnership. Member States are responsible for the timely and correct implementation and application of EU law while the Commission's responsibility is to ensure that EU law is applied consistently.

Adopted legislative acts setting up the goals that all EU countries must achieve, when coming into force, require Member States to communicate their national transposition measures to the Commission by strict given deadlines.

The European Council conclusions foster the introduction of a European Legislation Identifier (ELI), aimed at providing simple access to information in relation to EU and EU countries' national legislation.

The adoption of ELI enables EU and national legislation to be referenced in a harmonised and stable way, resulting in a faster and more efficient search and data exchange system which is accessible to citizens or specific users such as legislators, judges and legal professionals.

The outcome of this proposal will be a solution which enhances and simplifies the transmission and dissemination of legislation related data, within the context of EU Law proceedings, by integrating the ELI link within notifications, aiming at simplifying working methods and avoiding data inconsistencies and duplication.

What are the objectives?

The overall objective of this action is to better and more efficiently managed the application of EU law in the Member States.

The specific objective of this action is to identify and implement common web services aimed at improving communication and information exchange between Commission services and EU countries. The project will analyse, design and develop services to manage and support the exchange and dissemination of data in relation to legislation, via the adoption of the ELI link, between Member States and the Commission whenever needed through the lifecycle of an infringement proceeding.

These services will become part of the catalogue of existing services developed within the scope of ISA Action 1.20 and ISA² Action 2016.01, which have been integrated into the THEMIS application. THEMIS is the central Commission IT application which will provide a one-stop solution for Commission services and Member States' administrations with regard to all aspects of the application of EU law; starting from the transposition process of directives into national legislation and the notification of the corresponding legal acts to the Commission, through dialogue based problem resolution triggered either by complaints or own-initiative of the Commission, onto the full bi-directional flow of information in the context of infringement proceedings.

What are the benefits?

• Security, rapidity and privacy, preservation of information
• Avoid double encoding
• Administrative simplification, effectiveness and efficiency
• Efficient IT development and evolution based on the re-use of existing building blocks, flexibility, scalability, adaptability to legislation change
• Transparency and openness through efficient interoperability with other related IT systems
• Improved data quality and searchability

What has been achieved?

• The first version and the second improved final version of the web services in scope of this action were finalised and validated by all relevant stakeholders
• The acceptance-testing phase of the web services of ELI@EULAW was successfully finalised
• The guidelines on the implementation of ELI were prepared