Finland

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ELI coordination

Organisation/state agency responsible for the ELI implementation

Ministry of Justice, Finland

Responsible person(s)

Aki Hietanen

Contact email

finlex.om@gov.fi

Status of ELI implementation

Access to the ELI startpage

https://data.finlex.fi

Level of implementation

Pillars 1, 2 and 3

URI template structure for pillar 1

Finland legislation is published using the URI template described at https://data.finlex.fi/fi/urit

Implemented metadata elements (only applicable for pillar 2)

The metadata model is explained at https://data.finlex.fi/fi/lainsaadanto

Examples

https://data.finlex.fi/eli/sd/2008/521/alkup.html

Additional information

The implementation of ELI was started in 2015 in close cooperation with the ELI project of the EU Publications Office (especially Thomas Francart. The website Semantic Finlex, implementing ELI, was opened in March 2016. Semantic Finlex contains the datasets of Consolidated legislation and Original texts of acts and decrees in RDF format. Original texts of acts and decrees contains legal texts as originally published in the Statutes of Finland. Consolidated legislation contains updated versions of the original texts of acts and decrees. A statute's text is updated whenever an amendment to it is published in the Statutes of Finland.

RDF data model

The RDF data model applied to legal datasets is based on the ELI standard (European Legislation Identifier) designed, in order to enhance interoperability between the legislation of the EU and its Member States. The ELI standard defines a metadata model (ontology) for statutes and a template for creating Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). In the Semantic Finlex project, the ELI ontology was expanded with the Semantic Finlex Legislation (SFL) ontology developed as part of the project.

ELI ontology

The ELI ontology is based on a general FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) description model. In FRBR terminology, 'work' refers to a written document at the conceptual level (as a separate written creation), 'expression' refers to a separate implementation of a work (for example, a certain language version) and 'manifestation' refers to the physical manifestation of an expression (a certain publication, such as a PDF). ELI applies the FRBR model by creating its own counterparts for legal datasets as follows:

eli:LegalResource corresponds to the work level, i.e. a statute at conceptual level
eli:LegalExpression corresponds to the expression level, i.e. the language version of a statute
eli:Format corresponds to the manifestation level, i.e. the physical manifestation of a language version in a certain content format

As part of the ELI ontology, metadata fields are defined for each level. These will be presented below.

SFL ontology

SFL ontology (Semantic Finlex Legislation) is an extension to ELI ontology used in the Semantic Finlex service. In addition to different language and content format versions SFL defines classes for different temporal versions of statutes and sections of law. Therefore, SFL divides eli:LegalResource class to four subclasses as follows:

sfl:Statute (statute). Statute at a conceptual level eg. Criminal Code (39/1889)>
sfl:SectionOfALaw (section of a law). Section of law at conceptual level eg. Criminal Code 39/1889 Chapter 1 Section 2>
sfl:StatuteVersion (statute version). Statute at a specific point in time, eg. Criminal Code 39/1889 as it was on 1.1.2016>
sfl:SectionOfALawVersion (section of a law version). Section of law at a specific point in time, eg. Criminal Code 39/1889 Chapter 1 Section 2 as it was on 1.1.2016>

The relationship between a statute and a statute version is expressed with properties eli:has_member and eli:is_member_of. The relationship between a section of a law and a section of a law version is expressed likewise with the same properties.

Last update: 01/12/2022