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Publication of ELI ontology version 1.3 (July 2020)

The ELI working group published in July 2020 ELI ontology version 1.3. The ELI ontology provides a descriptive framework for structuring metadata of legislative resources and publishing them as linked data. The ELI ontology is a cornerstone of a ‘legal linked data’, as it describes relationships between national and European legislative resources. This new version of the ontology sets the necessary semantic foundations for the upcoming release of the ELI-DL extension (ELI for Draft Legislation). Learn more about ELI-DL on the dedicated Joinup page​ .

ELI is based on the conceptual FRBR model (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Resources) and allows to identify with precision each conceptual level of a legislative resource (a whole act, a specific and provisional version of an act, a given version in a particular file format, etc.). This descriptive model is the result of collaboration and discussions within the ELI Taskforce. The model can also be used in different legislative systems.

The following improvements have been introduced into this version:

  • introduced High-Level FRBR classes eli:Work, eli:Expression and eli:Manifestation, to be shared in ELI-DL;
  • broaden the domain and range of structural FRBR properties to eli:Work, eli:Expression or eli:Manifestation, so that they can be shared in ELI-DL:
    • eli:is_member_of/eli:has_member
    • eli:is_part_of/eli:has_part
    • eli:is_realized_in/eli:realizes
    • eli:is_embodied_by/eli:embodies
    • eli:exemplified_by
  • broaden the domain of eli:title, eli:title_short, eli:title_alternative, eli:language to:eli:Expression so that they can be shared in ELI-DL;
  • introduced eli:type_subdivision to express the type of a eli: LegalResourceSubdivision
  • introduced eli:countersigned_by to capture countersignatures of legislation
  • introduced eli:ensures_implementation_of / eli:implementation_ensured_by to capture the fact that some legislation are modified to remain "compatible" with other EU-level or national-level regulations; this implies a legal meaning.

A detailed list of improvements can be found at: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/model/-/resource/dataset/eli​ .

More information can be found on the page of ELI ontology​ .