European Union Policy-Making (EUPOL Version 5) Dataset

The EUPOL (Version 5) dataset includes virtually all information contained in the European Commission’s online database PreLex. The mission of PreLex was to monitor the inter-institutional decision-making process of the EU, providing information about various formal events and institutional actors involved in policy-making, as well as cross-references to documents contained in other online databases. In combination with its long-term coverage, starting in the mid 1970s, PreLex is a useful source of information for studies of long-term developments in EU politics and European integration.

Unfortunately, PreLex was discontinued in 2014 and its content integrated into EurLex. Version 5 of the EUPOL dataset provides the complete information contained in PreLex up to 17th September 2014 in a standardized and machine-readable format. The HTML code of all PreLex records at that point in time are also archived in the form of text files.

Please note that, for 2013 and 2014, the Commission did not update the procedure information anymore for all proposals contained in PreLex (personal communication). In particular, process information for 171 out of 936 proposals was missing in 2013 and 310 out of 583 proposals in 2014 (as of 17th September 2014). Although some of the proposals, especially those introduced in 2014, might not have had progressed yet, most of these records are probably incorrectly incomplete.