EU policy terms, explained

Written for developers who don't live in Brussels. If you've hit an acronym and don't know what it means, it's probably here.

Legal-document types

CELEX

The canonical identifier the EU assigns to every legal document in EUR-Lex. Format: 3 2016 R 0679 → CELEX 32016R0679 is the GDPR. First digit = sector (3 = legislation), next 4 = year, letter = document type (R = regulation, L = directive, D = decision, C = communication), remaining = serial number. Every Brubru law endpoint accepts and returns CELEX identifiers.

Regulation (R)

A binding EU law that applies directly in all Member States without national transposition. Example: GDPR.

Directive (L)

A binding EU law that sets a goal; Member States must pass national legislation (transposition) to meet it, usually within 2 years. Example: Data Protection Directive (now GDPR-replaced).

Decision (D)

A binding EU law addressed to specific parties (a Member State, a company, or the EU itself). Narrower scope than regulations.

Recommendation / Opinion

Non-binding. We surface them in search but flag the type.

Recital

A numbered paragraph in the preamble of an EU legal act that explains the reasoning. Recitals are not binding but guide interpretation. The /legal-text/{celex}/recital-article-map endpoint links each recital to the articles it motivates, via TF-IDF similarity.

Article

A numbered operative provision in an EU law. The binding rules.

Delegated act / Implementing act

Secondary legislation: the Commission fills in technical details of a parent regulation or directive. Delegated acts (under Article 290 TFEU) supplement; implementing acts (Article 291 TFEU) execute. Both carry CELEX identifiers.

OJ (Official Journal)

The daily publication where EU laws enter into force. L series = legislation, C series = communications, S series = tenders. Our /laws entries include an oj_reference like L 119/1.

Procedures & legislative flow

OEIL

The European Parliament's Legislative Observatory. Tracks every procedure from Commission proposal to adoption. Procedure references look like 2022/0277(COD) (year/number + procedure-type code). Our /procedures endpoint surfaces OEIL data.

OLP / COD: Ordinary Legislative Procedure

The default path for most EU legislation: Commission proposes, Parliament and Council co-decide. Procedure code COD.

Consultation procedure (CNS)

Council decides after consulting Parliament (non-binding). Still used for some tax and foreign-policy matters.

Consent procedure (APP)

Parliament must give consent but cannot amend. Used for major international agreements and some structural decisions.

Trilogue

Informal negotiation between Parliament, Council, and Commission to reach a deal on a legislative file. Not formally in the treaties but drives most OLP outcomes. Trilogue conclusions are rarely published verbatim; we surface related EPRS briefings and committee minutes.

Rapporteur

The MEP appointed to lead a legislative file in the responsible committee. Drafts the report. Our /procedures exposes rapporteur_mep_id.

Shadow rapporteur

An MEP from each of the other political groups who tracks the file and negotiates amendments. Available in /committees/{code}/work-items via shadow_rapporteurs.

Committee role

• Responsible / Lead (COM): the committee with primary jurisdiction.
• Opinion (AV): another committee gives a non-binding opinion.
• Associated: a committee with shared competence on parts of the file.

First reading

Stage when Parliament and Council each formulate their position. Most files conclude here.

Second reading

Stage when the institutions try to reconcile differences. After second reading, if they still disagree, the file goes to a conciliation committee.

Transposition deadline

The date by which Member States must have passed national law implementing an EU directive. Missing transposition triggers infringement procedures against the state.

Institutions & bodies

EP: European Parliament

705 MEPs directly elected every 5 years. Co-legislator with Council. Organised in political groups and committees.

Council of the EU

Ministers from Member States. Different "configurations" meet on different topics (e.g. ECOFIN for finance ministers, JHA for justice). Not to be confused with European Council (heads of state).

European Commission

The EU's executive. 27 commissioners, one per Member State. Proposes legislation, enforces treaties, manages the budget.

Commissioner College

The Commission's equivalent of a cabinet: all 27 commissioners meeting together. Our /commissioners/{name}/agenda surfaces each member's public calendar.

DG: Directorate-General

A Commission department. DG AGRI (agriculture), DG COMP (competition), DG CNECT (digital), DG SANTE (health), etc.

EEAS: European External Action Service

The EU's diplomatic service.

EESC: European Economic and Social Committee

Advisory body of employers, workers, civil-society reps. Issues opinions on EU legislation.

CoR: Committee of the Regions

Advisory body of local/regional government reps.

Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU)

Court in Luxembourg. Rulings bind Member State courts and shape interpretation of EU law.

ECA: European Court of Auditors

Audits EU finances.

ECB: European Central Bank

Manages the euro. Also banking supervisor under the SSM.

Research & documentation

EPRS: European Parliamentary Research Service

EP's in-house research body. Publishes briefings, in-depth analyses, and EU Legislation in Progress updates. Now part of our unified /research-publications?source=EPRS endpoint.

STOA: Science and Technology Options Assessment

EP panel for scientific foresight. Studies technology and policy intersections (AI, neurotech, biotech). Indexed at /research-publications?source=STOA.

JRC: Joint Research Centre

The Commission's in-house science service. Produces evidence-based input to policymaking. Indexed at /research-publications?source=JRC.

ART: Council Strategic Reflection Papers

Strategic foresight papers by the General Secretariat of the Council. Indexed at /research-publications?source=ART.

ECA: European Court of Auditors

The EU's external auditor. Audit reports indexed at /research-publications?source=ECA.

Webstream

Live and on-demand video of EP committee meetings and plenary debates from multimedia.europarl.europa.eu. Each committee_meeting calendar event surfaces a webstream_url; bulk listing at /webstreams.

Commission Register

The EC's Documents Register listing preparatory and policy documents (COM, SWD, JOIN, C-series). 528 documents indexed at /commission-register-documents, each enriched with the EUR-Lex CELEX-derived PDF URL when published on Cellar.

Council Documents

The Council's public register (presidency notes, working-party reports, conclusions, ST-references). Indexed at /council-documents.

Delegated act / Implementing act

Article 290 TFEU acts (delegated) are adopted by the Commission under powers delegated by the co-legislators; Article 291 TFEU acts (implementing) ensure uniform implementation. Indexed at /delegated-acts and /implementing-acts.

CRE: Compte Rendu in extenso

Verbatim report of European Parliament plenary debates. Daily for plenary weeks. Available in the EP's doceo portal.

Cellar

The Publications Office's digital repository of EU law. Persistent URLs at publications.europa.eu/resource/celex/{CELEX}. Our /laws/{celex}/text uses Cellar as a fallback when the local Formex cache doesn't have the law.

Formex

The XML format used inside Cellar for EU legal texts. Pass ?format=xml on /laws/{celex}/text to get raw Formex.

EUR-Lex

Public-facing search portal for EU law (eur-lex.europa.eu). Backed by Cellar. Every law response includes an eurlex_url field linking to the EUR-Lex page.

Stakeholder engagement

Have Your Say (HYS)

EC consultation portal at ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say. Citizens and organisations post feedback on proposed legislation. Each consultation has an integer initiative ID. Our /consultations/by-initiative/{id}/feedback returns the live feedback with country and user-type aggregates.

Transparency Register

Joint EP + Commission register of lobbyists (organisations engaging with EU institutions). Fields include FTE, lobbying spend, EP badge count. We surface meetings via /meetings (which Commissioner / Cabinet member / DG met which interest representative when).

RSB: Regulatory Scrutiny Board

Independent body that reviews Commission impact assessments and major evaluations. RSB opinions are binding on whether a proposal can move forward. Indexed at /rsb-opinions.

TRIS: Technical Regulations Information System

EU portal where Member States notify draft technical regulations (Directive 2015/1535). Indexed at /tris-notifications.

TED: Tenders Electronic Daily

The EU's official tender publication: every public-procurement notice above thresholds. We index 386 active tenders today at /tenders.

People

MEP: Member of the European Parliament

Elected representative in the EP. Our /meps endpoint surfaces identifier, full name, country of representation, political group, role.

Commissioner

A member of the European Commission. President + Executive Vice-Presidents + Commissioners, each with a portfolio (e.g. Cohesion, Competition, Digital). Each commissioner record surfaces agenda_url, unified_calendar_url (the College-wide calendar items page), and bio_url.

Official

An EU staff member identified in the EU Who Is Who directory. Brubru indexes 16,521 records across Commission DGs, EP services, Council Secretariat, Ombudsman, and decentralised agencies. Available at /api/v2/who-is-who/officials.

Leader / leader_id

The director, head-of-unit or senior official who leads a DG / committee secretariat / agency. Surfaced as leader_id on the relevant metadata responses; cross-references back to /officials.

Political groups

The EP's party formations: EPP (centre-right, largest), S&D (socialists), RENEW (liberals), Greens/EFA, ECR (conservatives), Patriots, ESN, The Left, non-attached.

Data types in our responses

ISO-8601

Standard date/time format: 2026-04-20T15:30:00Z for UTC, 2026-04-20 for date-only. All timestamps in Brubru responses are ISO-8601.

ISO-3166 alpha-3

Country codes (BEL, FRA, DEU...) used in our consultation feedback responses.

TSVECTOR

PostgreSQL full-text search type. Our /laws?q=<query> uses TSVECTOR indexes for fast keyword search across title + subject matter.

XGBoost

The gradient-boosting ML library we use for procedure-outcome predictions. Trained weekly on historical OEIL data.

Brubru-specific terms

Knowledge guide

A hand-written Brubru policy explainer. 206 guides today, each covering a specific EU law or policy area with a QUICK FACTS summary and keyword triggers. Exposed via /knowledge-guides.

Recital-article map

Our computed mapping from each article of a law to the top-3 recitals that motivate it (TF-IDF cosine similarity). Unique to Brubru: nobody else sells this.

Defined terms

Extracted from Article 3 / Article 4 of most EU laws, where "X means ...". Indexed for hover-definition UX and programmatic lookup.

Alias resolver

680+ human nicknames of EU laws (GDPR, DSA, AI Act, CBAM, Solvency II, CRR) mapped to CELEX identifiers. Call POST /legal-text/resolve-aliases with any text; get back matches.

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