Facilitating access to data on European Union laws

ABSTRACT Much of empirical research on European integration relies on data published by European Union (EU) institutions concerning the EU’s laws and policies. However, despite wide disciplinary appeal and increasing regularization of data repositories such as Eur-Lex, researchers have so far not developed a standardized tool for accessing the main EU law databases. This research note presents the benefits of creating an open-source data collection infrastructure that takes advantage of the structured way in which data is published by the EU. I exemplify how software implementing this idea can be used by researchers.