The ELI project in Spain (April 2018)

The Spanish legal system is complex and diverse, comprising rules corresponding to different territorial levels (national, Autonomous Community and local).

Each of these territorial levels has its own official journal and its own legislative information systems, making it necessary for the implementation of the ELI to be addressed in a coordinated manner by the different administrations.

For this reason, implementation of the ELI in Spain fell within the remit of the Sectoral Commission on Electronic Administration, a collaborative body that brings together decision-makers to address the interoperability of the various administrations.

As a result of the joint work carried out, on 13 March 2018 the Sectoral Commission adopted the document ‘Technical Specification for the implementation of the ELI in Spain’, laying down guidelines for applying the common identifier to national legislation and to that of the 17 Autonomous Communities:

• it specifies the legislative field to which the ELI is attributed;
• it defines the URI template for national and Autonomous Community legislation (pillar 1);
• it establishes a common minimum set of metadata (pillar 2).

Once the specification was approved, the State and the 17 Autonomous Communities started work on attributing the ELI to their respective legislation. It will soon be possible to access detailed information on the technical aspects of the project and its progress through a newly created common website.