C/2025/341

10.1.2025

DECISION OF THE BUREAU OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

of 16 December 2024

laying down Rules on the European Parliament’s Open Data

(C/2025/341)

THE BUREAU OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT,

Having regard to Rule 25(2) of the Rules of Procedure,

Whereas:

(1) Data are a strategic asset, necessary for innovation and to enable new technologies to be used, most notably artificial intelligence;

(2) Public organisations systematically make available part of their public data in the form of open data to promote transparency and accountability, to empower citizens and to improve public services through the fostering of innovation;

(3) To support that practice, Directive (EU) 2019/1024 of the European Parliament and of the Council (1) was adopted;

(4) In its resolution of 25 March 2021 on a European strategy for data (2), the European Parliament called for measures to allow for a greater flow of data between the public sector and businesses, as well as within each of them;

(5) The European Commission, the Council of the European Union and the Court of Auditors have adopted measures formalising the openness of their data; in 2011, the European Commission adopted Decision 2011/833/EU (3), which aims to facilitate a wider re-use of public information. Following the example of the European Commission, the Council of the European Union adopted Decision (EU) 2017/1842 (4) and the Court of Auditors adopted Decision No 6-2019 (5), on open data policy and document re-use policies;

(6) National parliaments have also recognised the need to improve the accessibility of their public data. In 2022, the Inter-Parliamentary Union conducted an open data study and published a list (6) of the parliamentary chambers worldwide that currently offer open data on dedicated portals or websites;

(7) For Parliament, making its public data as easy to find and as interoperable as possible is the embodiment of its commitments to openness and accountability; it complements the decisions taken to strengthen integrity, independence and the accountability of the institution. Making open data available is also a way to stimulate innovation of services to Members, to enhance Parliament’s data-driven decision-making and to strengthen its outreach to citizens;

HAS ADOPTED THIS DECISION:

Article 1

Definition

Open data are public data made available in a structured, machine-readable format and published under terms and conditions that allow for easy re-use and redistribution.

Article 2

Scope and objectives

1. Parliament commits itself to making available, as open data, its public data, and establishes the principles, conditions and limitations governing their re-use.

2. Parliament aims to provide as much of its public data as possible in an open data format, and, in doing so, to give priority to datasets of high public interest.

Article 3

General principles

Any of the Parliament’s data which are already public may be published as open data.

To be considered ‘open’, the data must have the following four characteristics:

(a) ‘technical openness’: data and their metadata are offered in machine-readable, open formats;

(b) ‘legal openness’: data are subject to an open licence;

(d) ‘social openness’: with the aim to improve data quality and availability, users’ feedback is collected and considered when making data available.

Article 4

Conditions for reuse

The re-use of Parliament’s open data is subject to the conditions laid down in the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) (7). Raw data, metadata or other documents of a comparable nature may alternatively be distributed by Parliament under the Creative Commons Universal Public Domain Dedication deed (CC0 1.0) (8).

Article 5

Open Data Portal

1. Parliament hereby sets up and undertakes to maintain a European Parliament Open Data Portal to facilitate the discovery of and access to data available for re-use.

2. Parliament’s public data shall be made available via the European Parliament’s Open Data Portal in any existing language version and in formats that are open and machine-readable and that ensure that data, together with their metadata, are accessible to users, easy for them to find, and re-usable.

3. Both the data and their metadata shall comply with applicable open standards.

Article 6

Oversight and monitoring

Oversight and monitoring of the implementation of these Rules shall be assigned to a specific responsible entity, within the Parliament.

Article 7

Entry into force

This Decision shall enter into force 14 days after its publication in the

Official Journal of the European Union

(1) Directive (EU) 2019/1024 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on open data and the re-use of public sector information (

OJ L 172, 26.6.2019, p. 56

, ELI:

http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/1024/oj

(2)

OJ C 494, 8.12.2021, p. 37

(3) Commission Decision 2011/833/EU of 12 December 2011 on the reuse of Commission documents (

OJ L 330, 14.12.2011, p. 39

, ELI:

http://data.europa.eu/eli/dec/2011/833/oj

), implemented by Commission Decision C(2019) 1655 final of 22 February 2019 adopting Creative Commons as an open licence under the European Commission’s reuse policy (

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/rules-reuse-commission-information

(4) Council Decision (EU) 2017/1842 of 9 October 2017 on the open data policy of the Council and the reuse of Council documents (

OJ L 262, 12.10.2017, p. 1

, ELI:

http://data.europa.eu/eli/dec/2017/1842/oj

(5) Decision of the European Court of Auditors No 6-2019 on the open data policy and the reuse of documents (

https://www.eca.europa.eu/lists/ecadocuments/decision_eca_6_2019/eca-decision_06-2019_en.pdf

(6)

https://www.ipu.org/innovation-tracker/story/state-open-data-in-parliaments-in-2022

(7)

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

(8)

https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/

ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2025/341/oj

ISSN 1977-091X (electronic edition)