manual open data pilot project rev 3

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Brussels, 17 March 2015

MANUAL

PILOT PROJECT ON OPEN DATA

OF THE COUNCIL OF EU

VOTING RESULTS DATASET

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INDEX

1. INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………....

2. DESCRIPTION OF THE DATASET ……………………………………………..

2.1 TYPE OF ACT ………………………………………………………..

2.2 ACT NUMBER ……………………………………………………….

2.3 SUBJECT ……………………………………………………………..

2.4 DOCUMENT NUMBER ……………………………………………..

2.5 INTERINSTITUTIONAL CODE ………………………………….…

2.6 FORM OF ADOPTION ……………………………………………...

2.7 COUNCIL SESSION NUMBER…………………………………..….

2.8 DATE ………………………………………………………………....

2.9 CONCIL CONFIGURATION …………………………………….....

2.10 LEGISLATIVE PROCEDURE ………………………………..……..

2.11 ACTION BY COUNCIL ……………………………………………..

2.12 POLICY AREA ……………………………………………………....

2.13 VOTING RULE ………………………………………………………

3. HOW TO ACCESS DATA ……………………………………………………......

3.1 DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE DATASET ………………...……….…

3.2 QUERY DATASET ………………….……………...………………..

3.3 BROWSE DATASET …………………………...……………………

4. LINCENCE …………………………………………………….………………….

5. DISCLAIMER …………………………………………………………………….

6. SOURSES OF LINKING …………………………………………………………

7. HOW TO USE THE API - THE SPARQL ENDPOINT

8. DATASET ON THE EU OPEN PORTAL ……………………………………….

9. INFORMATION ON LINKED DATA …………………………………………...

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1. INTRODUCTION

The Council of the EU participates in the EU open data portal with a dataset containing all Council votes on legislative acts since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty (from 1 December 2009 to the present day).

The dataset is available in RDF Data Format (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework) in the form of Linked Open Data (LOD see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_data) for download, query and browse.

This manual explains the published dataset and provides information on how to use the data. The manual also identifies sources that this Linked Open Dataset (LOD) links to and lists further readings about Open Data and LOD.

The Council Open Data Initiative, Pilot Project, has been designed and implemented supported by the Semantic Web Company (SWC), Vienna, Austria, see: http://www.semantic-web.at in 2015.

2. DESCRIPTION OF THE DATASET

The Council's voting records are public whenever it adopts a legislative act under the ordinary or a special legislative procedure. On average, the Council adopts 120 legislative acts per year.

This database contains not only the votes of the Council when adopting a legislative act but also information related to that act, such as:

• act type (regulation, directive, decision or position)

• act number (as published in the EU's Official Journal)

• document number (submitted to the Council for adoption)

• interinstitutional code

• date of adoption

• action by the Council (according to the steps of the legislative procedure)

• form of adoption (in a Council meeting or by written procedure)

• Council configuration

• Council session

• policy area

• legislative procedure (ordinary or special legislative procedure)

• voting rule (qualified majority or unanimity)

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2.1 TYPE OF ACT

A legislative act can be a regulation, a directive, a decision or a position.

2.2 ACT NUMBER

All entries in the dataset have an act number that corresponds to its number in the Official Journal (act numbers in the dataset do not contain letters, such as /EC or /EU (e.g. Directive 2011/75).

Exceptions:

• Entries that do not lead to the adoption of an act (e.g. action by Council - non-approval of EPs amendments).

• Entries for acts that are not published in the OJ.

• Positions of the Council on budgetary acts. These acts are published in the OJ without a specific number. The dataset records these acts with the following abbreviation system:

GB - General budget

DAB - draft Amending budget

ADAB - Amended draft amending budget

To note: From 1 January 2015, the numbering of EU legal acts has changed. A new method has been developed to harmonise and simplify previous practices. Please see the Publications Office information note on this issue at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/content/tools/elaw/OA0614022END.pdf

2.3 SUBJECT

The title of the legislative act as it appears in the Official Journal.

2.4 DOCUMENT NUMBER

The number of the document submitted to Council for adoption. This number does not contain letters such as PE-CONS.

There should only be one vote per document.

Exception:

• Some legislative acts are part of a "package", this means that several acts may be submitted for adoption within a single Council document. Consequently, several different entries of the dataset may share the same document number.

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2.5 INTERINSTITUTIONAL CODE

The interinstitutional code is a number attributed by the Commission to a legislative act to be adopted by the Council in codecision with or in consultation of the European Parliament.

Legislative acts to be adopted by the Council alone do not have an interinstitutional code.

2.6 FORM OF ADOPTION

A legislative act may be adopted by the Council:

• in session (during a Council meeting),

• by written procedure.

The dataset also contains an entry for all legislative acts adopted by the European Parliament in second reading (since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty).

2.7 COUNCIL SESSION NUMBER

All Council meetings have a session number. In general, legislative acts are adopted by the Council during a Council meeting.

Exception:

• There are acts or entries with no session number because such acts are adopted either by written procedure or by the EP in second reading (see section 2.5 above).

2.8 DATE

The date can correspond to:

• the Council's session (for acts adopted during a meeting),

• the end of the written procedure (for acts adopted in WP),

• the first day of the EP Plenary (for acts adopted by the EP in second reading).

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2.9 CONFIGUARATION

The Council can meet in 10 different configurations, as follows:

• General Affairs,

• Foreign Affairs,

• Economic and Financial Affairs,

• Justice and Home Affairs,

• Employment, Social Policy, health and Consumer Affairs,

• Competitiveness (Internal Market, Industry, Research and Space),

• Transport, Telecommunications and Energy,

• Agriculture and Fisheries

• Environment,

• Education, Youth, Culture and Sport.

2.10 LEGISLATIVE PROCEDURE

After the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, legislative acts are adopted either by the Ordinary Legislative Procedure or by special legislative procedure.

On this dataset, the following codes are used to identify the legislative procedure:

• COD - for the Ordinary legislative procedure

• CNS - Special legislative procedure

• APP - Special legislative procedure (EP consent)

Occasionally, an entry might have the code NLE (Non-legislative procedure) which votes are published for information purposes.

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2.11 ACTION BY COUNCIL

When a legislative act is submitted to Council, the Council can take the following actions (depending on the stage of the legislative procedure):

• Adoption of the legislative act,

• Adoption of the position of the Council at first reading,

• Adoption of the Statement of the Council's reasons,

• Approval of the EP's amendments,

• Non-Approval of the EP's amendments,

• Approval of the Conciliation Committee joint text

• Non-Approval of the Conciliation Committee joint text

• Adoption of the Council's position (budget)

• Adoption of legislative acts followings the EP's second reading (not an action by the Council but included in the dataset)

2.12 POLICY AREA

This dataset contains the following policy areas:

• Agriculture,

• Consumer affairs,

• Culture

• Economy,

• Education,

• Employment,

• Energy,

• Environment,

• Finances,

• Fisheries,

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• Foreign Affairs,

• Health,

• Industry,

• Institutional matters,

• Internal market,

• Justice and Home Affairs,

• Research,

• Social policy,

• Space,

• Sport,

• Telecommunications,

• Transport,

• Youth

Each entry will have only one policy area.

2.13 VOTING RULE

Unanimity:

Abstentions do not prevent unanimity from being reached.

Qualified majority:

Where all 28 Member States are participating in the vote:

When the Council is acting on a proposal from the Commission or the High Representative, qualified majority is reached if at least 55% of members vote in favour (16 members) accounting for at least 65% of the total population of the EU.

However, a blocking minority must include at least 4 Member States not voting in favour, failing which qualified majority is attained.

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Where not all 28 Member States are participating in the vote:

There are cases in which, under the Treaties, one or more members of the Council may not participate in the vote (because they have an "opt-out" on the matter being decided) so if fewer than 28 Council members are voting, all the above figures will be affected accordingly.

The calculation for a blocking minority will also be affected. If fewer than 28 Member States are voting, the blocking minority is defined as the minimum number of Member States representing more than 35% of the population of the participating Member States, plus one member not voting in favour.

To note - In the dataset:

• QMV - means "qualified majority voting based on a proposal by the Commission",

• QMV without COM - means "qualified majority voting not based on a proposal by the Commission".

3. HOW TO ACCESS THE DATA

The dataset and the data is available in three use cases to access the data as follows:

3.1. DOWNLOAD THE WHOLE DATASET

The dataset can be downloaded in one file as an RDF Dump in the form of a compressed ZIP File (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_%28file_format%29) here:http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public-voting/council-votes-on-legislative-acts.zip.

There are several ways to open this .zip File in order to use the data:

a) Double-click the ZIP file. In Windows XP or newer, Mac OS X, and Ubuntu Linux, you can double-click the ZIP file and it will open in a new window. You can then copy the contents to another folder. OS X will create a new folder next to the ZIP file when you double-click it, but may not open it automatically.

a) In Windows and Linux, its possible to right-click the Zip file and select “Extract All…” or “Extract Here”. 'Extract All' will allow you to set a path for the extracted folder to go, and 'Extract Here' will uncompress the folder and leave it in the same location as the ZIP file.

c) As the ZIP format is open, almost any compression software will be able to unzip and zip archives. There are a variety of free and paid software available. Some of the more popular free options is: 7-Zip (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7-Zip).

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3.2. QUERY THE DATASET

The dataset can be queried by making use of the provided Data API in the form of a SPARQL endpoint (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARQL), at: http://data.consilium.europa.eu/sparql.

3.3. BROWSE THE DATASET

Browsing can be done in the form of HTML pages, at: http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting.

You can follow your interests and browse through the whole dataset following relations, such as from "Countries" to "Votes" or from "Policy Areas" to respective "Votes", etc.

URI Schema

As the data is provided as Linked Open Data persistent Uniform Resource identifiers (URIs) are used (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_resource_identifier).

Structured data should not only be limited to the data model itself. With the emergence of RDF and Linked Data where URIs are global keys, it is highly recommended to let URIs follow comprehensible patterns that make it easier to judge the contents of an entity description at first sight by looking at the URI and alleviate the need to dereference an entity in some cases. This is especially useful when designing an URI Schema for a whole collection of heterogeneous datasets containing schema and instance data. From the following general representation of a URI (Source of Information: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Identifier), the authority (sub domains) and the path part are of special interest, since these parts can be customized and structured to fit all requirements:

foo://example.com:8042/over/there?name=ferret#nose \_/ \______________/\_________/ \_________/ \__/ | | | | |

scheme authority path query fragment | __________________|__ / \ / \ urn:example:animal:ferret:nose

Giving parts of the URI a certain semantic will not only enable publishers and users to judge the contents available under a certain URI without the need to dereference said URI but also exposes the possibility of using means like the POWDER protocol (see: http://www.w3.org/TR/powder-primer/) to describe common features of the contents of sets of URIs using simple, well known tools like regular expression.

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URIs are to be considered universal identifiers. In the realm of Linked Data these keys are scoped to be HTTP URIs. URI Schemes, the semantics that is given to an otherwise plain string are limited to certain parts of the URI in any given environment, which include sub domain restrictions, top level domains and the general environment in which these URIs are to be created as well as what needs to be done with the URIs and last but not least basic factors like human taste.

In this document we try minimize taste influence but keep a strict eye on what can be done with the URI in an organization with multiple subunits, that potentially also will publish some sort of URIs.

The general goal of a URI Scheme can be described as being able to inform clients about the semantics of a given URI in a short and concise way. If clear semantics are in place it is possible to use w3c recommendations like POWDER (see: http://www.w3.org/TR/powder-primer/) to describe the contents via regular expressions and create additional useful information that is retrievable even without dereferencing a URI. For example POWDER could be used to state that every URI in a given linked data environment that contains the string "void/dataset" denotes a complete dataset description using the void vocabulary. In contrast to humans this is not clear at first sight for machines or robots which are normal clients of linked data.

The URI Schema developed for the Council Open Data Initiative and thereby for the dataset is as follows:

http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public-voting/rdf/schema/actNumber (t-box) http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public-voting/rdf/schema/Act (t-box) http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public-voting/void/dataset/ds#current (a-box, dataset, note that ds would identify the dataset itself as a composite id) http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public-voting/consilium/act/1234 (a-box, non-dataset) http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public-voting/skos/concept/fisheries (a-box, non-dataset)

For more information on URI schema and best practise etc please see the following resources:

[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Identifier [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/powder-primer/ [3] https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/group/track/issues/14 [4] https://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/ [5] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-lod/2013Mar/0115.html [6] http://www.w3.org/TR/cooluris/#choosing [7] http://data-gov.tw.rpi.edu/wiki/URI_design_for_RDF_conversion_of_CSV-based_data [8] http://de.slideshare.net/OpenDataSupport/design-and-manage-persitent-uris

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RDF Schema(s) / attributes

The dataset: Council votes on legislative acts has been modelled in RDF following the W3C recommendation of the RDF DataCube Vocabulary (see: http://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-data-cube/).

The core of the dataset evolves around the datacube classes of DimensionProperty, MeasureProperty and Observation. For all distinct values of the included columns of the source database (i.e.: policyArea, votingProcedure, configuration,..) DimensionProperties have been created.

The range (possible values) of these DimensionProperties have been added into micro thesaurus (ConceptScheme + Concepts) that serve, according to the datacube specifications as a codeList (=range) for the respective objects of triples, where these dimensionProperties are the predicate.

Likewise the MeasureProperty was created for the source database's vote column (i.e. inFavour, against,..).

To combination of sets of values for DimensionProperties with one single value of a MeasureProperty forms an Observation. The following illustration shows the core structure of the dataset exemplified by the Act "Observation AT23" about the Policy area "Space" for which "Austria" voted "In Favour".

Additionally to the above mentioned classes the DataCube has been described according to the specification using datacube's DataSet and DataStructureDefinition classes. Since all possible values in the range of a DimensionProperty are Concepts by design, additional rdf types have been added to these Concepts with respect to the involved DimensionProperty to make them easily distinguishable, i.e. all Concepts that can be used as an object for triples having the Policy area DimensionProperty as predicate are also of rdf type consilium:PolicyArea. The dataset above has been described using the void vocabulary's Dataset class.

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All DimensionProperties can be seen by issuing the following SPARQL query.

PREFIX qb:<http://purl.org/linked-data/cube#>

PREFIX dct:<http://purl.org/dc/terms/>

SELECT DISTINCT ?dimensionProperty ?title WHERE {

?dimensionProperty a qb:DimensionProperty;

dct:title ?title

} ORDER BY ?title

Likewise the following query shows all MeasureProperties



SELECT DISTINCT ?dimensionProperty ?title WHERE {

?dimensionProperty a qb:MeasureProperty;

dct:title ?title

} ORDER BY ?title

The additionally added class (along Concept) can be seen by the following query



PREFIX skos:<http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>

PREFIX rdf:<http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>

SELECT DISTINCT

?dimensionProperty

?title

?codeList

?type

WHERE {

?dimensionProperty a qb:DimensionProperty;

qb:codeList ?codeList;

dct:title ?title .

?codeList skos:hasTopConcept/a ?type FILTER(?type!=skos:Concept)

} ORDER BY ?title

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Core Instances and Attributes

URI Attribute Value Comment

${baseURI}/qb/dataset

rdf:type qb:DataSet

dcterms:title "DataCube"

dcterms:description "DataCube for Public Voting Results"

qb:structure ${baseURI}/qb/datastructuredefinition

(Description of the structure of the DataCube)

${baseURI}/qb/datastructuredefinition

rdf:type qb:DataStructureDefinition

dcterms:title "DataStructure"

dcterms:description "DataStructure for Public Voting Results"

qb:component ${baseURI}/qb/componentspecification/act

Links to n DimensionProperties and 1 MeasureProperty, (i.e. the DimensionProperty for the Acts, PolicyArea, see below)

${baseURI}/qb/dimensionproperty/act

rdf:type

qb:DimensionProperty

An example for a DimensionPropety, other available DimensionProperties include Properties for "Act Date", "Action By Council", "Act Type", "Configuration", "Country", "Document Number Council", "Interinstitutional Number",

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"Policy Area", "Session Number", "Voting Procedure" and "Voting Rule". This DimensionProperty relates an qb:Observation to Acts.

dcterms:title "Act"

dcterms:description "Description of an Act"

qb:codeList ${baseURI}/skos/conceptscheme/actscheme

A link to the skos:ConceptScheme containing the list of possible values for this DimensionProperty as top concepts.

${baseURI}/skos/conceptscheme/actscheme

rdf:type skos:ConceptScheme The skos:ConceptScheme containing the skos:Concept s that can be used as objects in triples where the above DimensionProperty is used as predicate.

dcterms:title "Act Scheme"

skos:hasTopConcept

${baseURI}/consilium/act/3073

${baseURI}/consilium/act/3073

rdf:type skos:Concept An example for a skos:Concept that describes one Act. The skos:prefLabel is taken from the Act's id, the long description of the Act is added as skos:definition

rdf:type ${baseURI}/rdf/schema/Act

According to the DimensionProperty by which this skos:Concept can

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be related it gets an additional rdf:type to make it easier distinguishable from other skos:Concepts.

skos:prefLabel "3073"

skos:definition "Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council repealing Council Regulation (EC) No 1964/2005 on the tariff rates for bananas (first reading)"

${baseURI}/qb/dimensionproperty/policyarea

rdf:type qb:DimensionProperty

Another example of a DimensionProperty. This DimensionProperty relates an qb:Observations to PolicyAreas of the European Union's Council.

dcterms:title "Policy Area"

dcterms:description "Description of an the Policy Area Dimension Property"

qb:codeList ${baseURI}/skos/conceptscheme/policyareascheme

A link to the skos:ConceptScheme containing the list of possible values for this DimensionProperty as top concepts.

${baseURI}/skos/conceptscheme/policyareascheme

rdf:type skos:ConceptScheme The skos:ConceptScheme containing the skos:Concept s that can be used as objects in triples where the above

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DimensionProperty is used as predicate.

dcterms:title "Policy Area Scheme"

skos:hasTopConcept ${baseURI}/consilium/policyarea/culture

${baseURI}/consilium/policyarea/culture

rdf:type skos:Concept An example for a skos:Concept that describes one Act. The skos:prefLabel is taken from the Act's id, the long description of the Act is added as skos:definition

rdf:type ${baseURI}/rdf/schema/PolicyArea

According to the DimensionProperty by which this skos:Concept can be related it gets an additional rdf:type to make it easier distinguishable from other skos:Concepts.

skos:prefLabel "Culture"

rdfs:seeAlso http://eurovoc.europa.eu/100213

A single skos:Concept can be linked to remote linked data entities via different predicates like owl:sameAs, rdfs:seeAlso,...

${baseURI}/qb/observation/103/AT

rdf:type qb:Observation An Observation. Please note that the URIs for Observation include the act number plus the two digit country code to ensure the uris are unique.

qb:dataSet ${baseURI}/qb/dataset

Assertion to which qb:Dataset this qb:Observation belongs.

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dcterms:identifier "103/AT" The identifier of the qb:Observation

${baseURI}/qb/dimensionproperty/acttype

${baseURI}/consilium/acttype/decision

The "Act Type" dimension of this qb:Observation. Again, the object of this triple is a skos:Concept in a skos:ConceptScheme that is defined as the qb:codeList of the predicate (=DimensionProperty) used. The object of this triple has an additional rdf:type for convenience depending on the DimensionProperty.

${baseURI}/qb/dimensionproperty/policyarea

${baseURI}/consilium/policyarea/finances

The "Policy Area" dimension of this qb:Observation.

${baseURI}/qb/measureproperty/vote

${baseURI}/consilium/votedinfavour

The "Vote" qb:MeasureProperty relation of this qb:Observation

${baseURI}/qb/measureproperty/vote

rdf:type qb:MeasureProperty The "Vote" qb:MeasureProperty of this qb:DataSet. This property relates qb:Observation s to skos:Concept s in the in ${baseURI}/skos/conceptscheme/votescheme.

dcterms:title "Vote"

dcterms:description "Voting Behaviour"

${baseURI}/skos/conceptscheme/votescheme

rdf:type skos:ConceptScheme

The skos:ConceptScheme containing possible voting behaviours as skos:Concept.

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dcterms:title "Vote Scheme"

skos:hasTopConcept ${baseURI}/consilium/votedinfavour

Example for a possible voting behaviour.

${baseURI}/data/public_voting

rdf:type void:Dataset The dataset description using the VOID vocabulary.

dcterms:created 2015-03-04T13:01:20.505+01:00

Creation date of the Dataset (will be set when the pipeline runs)

dcterms:title "Council votes on legislative acts"

dcterms:description "The Council's voting records are public whenever it adopts a legislative act under the ordinary or a special legislative procedure. On average, the Council adopts 120 legislative acts per year."

dcterms:license http://ec.europa.eu/geninfo/legal_notices_en.htm

void:sparqlEndpoint ${baseURI}/sparql

foaf:homepage ${baseURI}/data/public_voting

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DataAccess

Any entity of this dataset can be accessed in various ways. The following list shows the possibilities for dereferencing the entities of the dataset.

1. Xhtml

a. ${baseURI}/qb/dataset.xhtml (appending .xhtml to the URI in a browser)

b. ${baseURI}/qb/dataset (calling this URI in a browser will redirect the client to ${baseURI}/qb/dataset.xhtml, since browser send application/xhtml+xml or text/html in their accept headers)

c. curl -L -H "accept: text/html" ${baseURI}/qb/dataset (-L = follow redirects)

d. curl -L -H "accept: application/xhtml+xml" ${baseURI}/qb/dataset

2. ttl

a. ${baseURI}/qb/dataset.ttl (appending .ttl to the URI in a browser will download or display (depending on your browser) the entity described using text/turtle)

b. curl -L -H "accept: text/turtle" ${baseURI}/qb/dataset

c. curl -L ${baseURI}/qb/dataset (defaults to text/turtle without accept header)

d. curl -L -H "accept: application/rdf+xml;text/turtle" ${baseURI}/qb/dataset (defaults to text/turtle, since both formats are available)

3. rdf/xml

a. ${baseURI}/qb/dataset.rdf (appending .rdf to the URI in a browser will download or display (depending on your browser) the entity described using application/rdf+xml)

b. curl -L -H "accept: application/rdf+xml" ${baseURI}/qb/dataset

4. sparql

a. SELECT ?s ?p ?o WHERE { ?s ?p ?o FILTER(?s=<${baseURI}/qb/dataset>)} (Will display/download the result according to the specified format for sparql select queries, either application/sparql+results+xml, application/sparql-results+json or text/html, these formats can be chosen at the sparqlEndpoint)

b. CONSTRUCT { <${baseURI}/qb/dataset> ?p ?o } WHERE { <${baseURI}/qb/dataset> ?p ?o } (This will display/download the graph according to the specified format, which can be chosen at the sparqlEndpoint)

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4. LICENSE

The dataset is available for free use and re-use under the following license: Europa legal notice (see: http://ec.europa.eu/geninfo/legal_notices_en.htm).

5. DISCLAIMER

This dataset is exclusively for information purposes.

Only Council minutes on the adoption of legislative acts are authentic. These are available through the Council's public register of documents, http://www.consilium.europa.eu/register/en/content/int/?lang=en&typ=ADV.

Information contained in this dataset with the publication status "published, not verified" may still be subject to change.

The General Secretariat of the Council aims to keep this information accurate. If errors are brought to our attention, we will try to correct them.

6. SOURCES OF LINKING:

The dataset 'Council votes on legislative acts' is linked to the following sources:

• Eurovoc, http://eurovoc.europa.eu/

• DBpedia, http://dbpedia.org

• MRD, http://publications.europa.eu/mdr/authority/index.html

• Geonames, http://www.geonames.org/

For the following voting result data and linking sources a mapping needed to be created as follows:

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For Council Configuration:

Dataset DBpedia

Foreign Affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Affairs_Council

General Affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Affairs_Council

Economic and Financial Affairs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_and_Financial_Affairs_Council

Justice and Home Affairs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_and_Home_Affairs_Council

Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs

no mapping

Competitiveness no mapping

Transport, Telecommunications and Energy

no mapping

Environment no mapping

Education, Youth, Culture and Sport

no mapping

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For Policy Area:

Dataset Eurovoc DBpedia

Agriculture 5631 agricultural activity (just number & term)

http://eurovoc.europa.eu/drupal/?q=request&mturi=http://eurovoc.europa.eu/100250&language=en&view=mt&ifacelang=en

Agriculture (just the term in Wikipedia - this is fully sufficient)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture (Wikipedia link)

Consumer Affairs

2026 consumption

http://eurovoc.europa.eu/drupal/?q=request&view=mt&mturi=http://eurovoc.europa.eu/100195&language=en

Consumer Affairs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Affairs

Culture 2831 culture and religion


Culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_policy

Economy 1606 economic policy

http://eurovoc.europa.eu/drupal/?q=request&view=pt&termuri=http://eurovoc.europa.eu/212086&language=en

Economy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy

Education 3206 education


Education

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_policy

Employment 4406 Employment


Employment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment

Energy 6606 energy policy

http://eurovoc.europa.eu/drupal/?q=request&mturi=http://eurovoc.europa.eu/100263&langu

Energy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_the_Euro

24 EN


age=en&view=mt&ifacelang=en pean_Union

Environment 5206 environmental policy


Environment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_policy_of_the_European_Union

Finances 2436 public finance and budget policy


Finances

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances

Fisheries 5641 fisheries


Fisheries

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Fisheries_Policy

Foreign Affairs 0806 international affairs


no mapping

General Affairs no mapping no mapping

Health 2841 health


Health

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_policy

Industry MT6806 industrial structures and policy


Industry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry

Internal market 1016 European construction (single market)

http://eurovoc.europa.eu/drupal/?q=request&v

Internal market

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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iew=mt&mturi=http://eurovoc.europa.eu/100176&language=en

/Internal_market

Justice and Home Affairs (JHA)

1016 European construction ( NT1 area of freedom, security and justice)


no mapping

Research 6416 research and intellectual property


Research

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Research_Area

Social Policy 2826 social affairs (Social Policy)


Social Policy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Policy

Space 6416 research and intellectual property

http://eurovoc.europa.eu/drupal/?q=request&concepturi=http://eurovoc.europa.eu/4185&termuri=http://eurovoc.europa.eu/220773&language=en&view=pt&ifacelang=en

Space policy of the European Union

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Space_Policy

Sport 2826 social affairs (NT 1)


Sport

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport

Transport 4806 transport policy


Transport

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport

Telecommunications

3226 communications

http://eurovoc.europa.eu/drupal/?q=request&v

Telecommunication (Redirected from

26 EN


iew=mt&mturi=http://eurovoc.europa.eu/100221&language=en

Telecommunications)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications

Youth 2826 social affairs (social policy)


4406 employment

http://eurovoc.europa.eu/drupal/?q=request&concepturi=http://eurovoc.europa.eu/4299&termuri=http://eurovoc.europa.eu/217159&language=en&view=pt&ifacelang=en

no mapping

27 EN

7. HOW TO USE THE API - THE SPARQL ENDPOINT

SPARQL is the standardized query language and protocol for querying RDF databases. If you're not familiar with SPARQL, check out this introduction.

Sample SPARQL Queries

Please find specified as follows sample SPARQL queries that can be used against the Data API / the SPARQL endpoint. Just copy and paste the query into the Sparql endpoint here: LINK and click 'Run Query'. Remark: the values in brackets can be seen as variables possible to be replaced.

The following 4 queries are given:

Votes for (Germany) (in the year 2014)

-----

PREFIX skos:<http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#> PREFIX pv:<http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting/> SELECT ?vote (COUNT(DISTINCT ?observation) AS ?count) WHERE { ?observation <http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting/qb/dimensionproperty/country> <http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting/consilium/country/de>; <http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting/qb/dimensionproperty/actdate> ?actDate FILTER(YEAR(?actDate)=2014) . ?observation <http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting/qb/measureproperty/vote>/skos:prefLabel ?vote } GROUP BY ?vote

---

How many acts were adopted under the (Ordinary Legislative Procedure)

---

SELECT (COUNT(DISTINCT ?act) AS ?count) WHERE { ?observation <http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting/qb/dimensionproperty/act> ?act; <http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting/qb/dimensionproperty/votingprocedure> <http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting/consilium/votingprocedure/cod>

---

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Number (percentage) of acts adopted with votes against and/or abstentions (in 2014) --- PREFIX skos:<http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#> SELECT ?vote (COUNT(DISTINCT ?act) AS ?count) WHERE { ?observation <http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting/qb/dimensionproperty/act> ?act . ?observation <http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting/qb/dimensionproperty/actdate> ?actDate FILTER(YEAR(?actDate)=2014) . ?observation <http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting/qb/measureproperty/vote>/skos:prefLabel ?vote } GROUP BY ?vote ORDER BY DESC(?count)

---

Number (percentage) of acts adopted with votes against and/or abstentions (in 2014) ---

SELECT (COUNT(DISTINCT ?act) AS ?count) WHERE { ?observation <http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting/qb/dimensionproperty/act> ?act; <http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting/qb/dimensionproperty/actdate> ?actDate; <http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting/qb/dimensionproperty/votingrule> <http://data.consilium.europa.eu/data/public_voting/consilium/votingrule/qualifiedmajority> . FILTER(YEAR(?actDate)=2014)

---

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8. DATASET ON THE EU OPEN DATA PORTAL

The dataset "Council votes on legislative acts" is also published on the EU Open Data Portal, at: - means the information that is describing the dataset / the respective metadata. This description follows the established standard for open datasets in Europe called DCAT-AP (see: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/asset/dcat_application_profile/description).

The link to the "Council votes on legislative acts" dataset on the EU Open Data Portals is as follows: https://open-data.europa.eu/en/data/dataset/council-votes-on-legislative-acts.

9. RESOURCES / INFOS FOR LINKED OPEN DATA

This section provides links and information to training material on Linked Open Data (LOD) as well as recommendations for further reading Open Data and Linked Open Data (LOD):

Further resources:

• Comprehensive online Training Material of Open Data Support: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/ods/document/online-training-material

• The data model (and format) of the data is RDF (Resource Description Framework). If you're not familiar with RDF you might want to check out this short introduction before you continue reading.

• Rdf In A Nutshell by Fabien Gardon

• Introducing Linked Data And The Semantic Web

• SPARQL is the standardized query language and protocol for querying RDF databases. If you're not familiar with SPARQL, read this introduction.

Linked Open Data is a way of publishing data so it can be accessed using a RESTful interface. If you take the URI of any resource, append it either with .rdf or .n3 and perform an HTTP GET you will receive an RDF document containing all the data about that resource. Once you retrieved the RDF data, you want to access it in a comfortable way. There are a couple of good libraries out there for parsing and processing RDF data in different programming languages:

Java

• OpenRDF Sesame

• Jena Framework

30 EN

C#

• SemWeb.NET

• Intellidimension Semantics.Framework 2.0

PHP

• ARC2

• Easy RDF

C

• Redland RDF Libraries

Python

• RDFLib

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manual open data pilot project rev 3

Documents