News

• Browse the EU Budget 2018 via the interactive dashboard
• Watch the recording of the Linked EU Budget Webinar of 28 June 2018

What is the value of Linked Open Fiscal data?

Read about the business case of fiscal (budget and spending) data as Linked Open Data here.

>>> download the presentation <<<

What is the EU Budget Vocabulary

The EU Budget Vocabulary and its RDF serialisation are designed to facilitate the exchange, increase the understandability and foster the reusability of budgetary information published by the EU. The Vocabulary aims to increase government transparency by improving the availability, usability and understandability of the EU Budget.

The expected benefits from applying the EU budget vocabulary include:

• Improved transparency towards the citizen by increasing the public understanding of the yearly adopted EU budget;
• Better decision making by providing high quality, fit for purpose and well structured data to support decision making;
• Increased harmonization in budget publication across institutions, government levels and countries by providing a common way of structuring public budgets;
• Increased flexibility for integrating data by embracing linked data principles; and
• Greater technology independence by supporting multiple machine-readable open data formats.

It is important to note that the EU Budget Vocabulary is aimed ONLY at the EU budget and not those of the Member States.

The Conceptual Data Model

The conceptual data model of the EU Budget Vocabulary was created based on an analysis of Data Type Definition files used for validating the XML files of the EU Budget that are published on Eur-Lex. Through that analysis, a list of potential classes and properties was identified. In a next stage, the four design principles of the EU Budget Vocabulary were then applied in order to identify (a) which elements should be considered as classes and which should be considered as properties, (b) how similar elements can be grouped, (c) which elements could be excluded from the dissemination vocabulary and (d) which code lists could be developed and maintained. The four design principles include:

1. Represent numbers at their lowest level of granularity. The RDF dissemination of the budget should only state data at its lowest level of granularity.
2. No duplication of information. A specific item of expenditure will only be stated in one location of the published budget. Data will not be repeated, i.e. no summary tables will be included.
3. Accuracy, validity and completeness. The published budget should only state data of which the validity, accuracy and completeness is guaranteed.
4. Focus on data. The RDF budget should separate the data from its visual representation.

The process for creating the EU Budget Vocabulary, the conceptual data model and the RDF serialisation are described in the document "Specification of an EU Budget Vocabulary".

EU Budget as Linked Open data

The EU Budget will soon be available as Linked Open Data on the EU Open Data Portal. In order the make the publication as LOD possible, the EU Budget Vocabulary was published in RDF and persistent URIs were created.

Are you interested in querying the EU Budget? Have a look at our example SPARQL queries to get you started:

• Word search in headings
• EU Programmes & related budget lines
• Summing up per MFF heading
• Filtering amounts
• Comparing titles per year