eurlex_summary
Retrieves the official plain-language summary of an EU legal act by CELEX ID and language, with pagination support.
Instructions
Returns the EU's official plain-language summary (LEGISSUM) of a legal act — a short editorial overview written for non-lawyers ("what is the aim", "key points", "from when does it apply"), NOT the binding legal text. Input is the act's celex_id (e.g. "32016R0679" for the GDPR, "32022R2065" for the Digital Services Act) and a language (any of the 24 official EU languages; summaries are usually available in all of them). Output is the summary text (plain, HTML stripped) plus its LEGISSUM id, title, last-update date, an obsolete flag, and source_url (the EUR-Lex summary page). Long summaries paginate via max_chars/offset exactly like eurlex_fetch — pass the previous response's next_offset to continue. Several thousand major acts have a summary; many acts have none (you get a clear "no summary" message). When an act has several summaries the most current non-obsolete one is returned and the rest are listed in other_summaries. For the full legal text use eurlex_fetch; for structured metadata use eurlex_metadata.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| offset | No | Character offset for pagination (0-based) | |
| celex_id | Yes | CELEX identifier of the EU act to summarize, e.g. "32016R0679" (GDPR) or "32022R2065" (Digital Services Act). LEGISSUM summaries exist for several thousand major acts; many acts have none. | |
| language | No | Language of the summary text, as a Cellar 3-letter code (any of the 24 official EU languages, e.g. DEU, ENG, FRA, POL, SPA). Summaries are typically available in all 24 languages. | ENG |
| max_chars | No | Maximum number of characters returned |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| date | No | ISO date of the returned summary, or '' | |
| title | No | ||
| offset | No | The offset this window was sliced from | |
| content | No | Summary text (plain, HTML stripped), sliced to window | |
| celex_id | Yes | The act CELEX that was queried | |
| language | Yes | ||
| obsolete | No | True when the returned summary is flagged obsolete | |
| truncated | No | True when more content remains beyond this window | |
| source_url | No | EUR-Lex legislative-summary (LSU) page for the act | |
| legissum_id | No | LEGISSUM id of the returned (primary) summary | |
| next_offset | No | Offset to request next, or null when there is no more content | |
| total_chars | No | Length of the full processed summary | |
| returned_chars | No | Length of `content` | |
| other_summaries | No | Other summaries for the same act (present only when total_summaries > 1) | |
| total_summaries | Yes | Total LEGISSUM summaries linked to this act; 0 means none was found |