Link: https://fabianbohnenberger.com/2024/04/10/how-to-read-eu-law/comment-page-1/

The linked article suggests looking at the “explanetory memorandum” of an EU law to do a deeper dive on it. Searching for it is a shit-show. The page showing a particular law shows the full text and a large selection of language and format (pdf, text, html), which is good, but nowhere on these pages is there a link to an “explanatory memorandum”. The advanced search page makes no mention of it. I actually had to do a general web search from a non-EU site and sort through a lot of garbage to dig up a link. The URL was cryptic and date-specific, so no way to simply reform an URL to get an explanatory memorandum for any given law.

BTW, what exactly is the explanatory memorandum? Is it always just a proposal before a law is created, or is it ever a post-enactment analysis with further detail?

It seems like the recitals in the preamble already exist to give rationale so the original proposal would be a bit redundant.

(update) I just realised the web hit goes to www.europarl.europa.eu, not eur-lex.europa.eu. But the search tool is blunt and non-intuitive.. not sure which filter to use.

(update 2) woah, more of a shit-show than I thought. The parliament site had the explanatory memorandum in a cryptic URL, but then when I search on that site for the doc there is an overview page that has a buried link to the explanatory memorandum on eur-lex.

(update 3) woah! what a shit show! The PDF links on the eur-lex site are fake. The *.pdf file is actually JavaScript! If you run the JS, it’s like a shitty download manager that presents another HTML page. Then /those/ PDF URLs are also fake. The only way to reach the PDF is using PDF.js inside a gui browser.

The EU is most certainly not adhering to its own open data policy.