EU Law Lookup API (EUR-Lex): article text, in force, amendments

One call answers "what does Article 50 of the AI Act say today, is it in force, and what amended it?": the article as plain text from the current consolidated version (or the one in force on any date), the act's in-force status and dates, and the acts that amend, correct or repeal it. A second mode lists new acts in the Official Journal L series. Built for AI agents doing legal and compliance work, and for people who want a sourced answer without SPARQL.

Pricing (pay per event): $0.005 per act or article returned (act-lookup). A citation that can't be read, or an article that doesn't exist, fails in seconds and costs nothing.

What you get

One JSON row per requested article (or one row for the act). Real output for {"query": "AI Act", "article": "50"}, run on 2026-11-05 (article text, corrected_by and amends shortened):

{
  "schema_version": "1",
  "query": "AI Act",
  "celex": "32024R1689",
  "eli": "http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1689/oj",
  "title": "Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence and amending Regulations (EC) No 300/2008, ... (Artificial Intelligence Act) (Text with EEA relevance)",
  "act_type": "Regulation",
  "act_type_code": "REG",
  "date_document": "2024-06-13",
  "date_publication": "2024-07-12",
  "oj_reference": "OJ L, 2024/1689",
  "date_entry_into_force": "2024-08-01",
  "entry_into_force_dates": ["2024-08-01", "2025-02-02", "2025-08-02", "2026-08-02", "2027-08-02"],
  "date_end_of_validity": null,
  "in_force": true,
  "eur_lex_url": "https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32024R1689",
  "summary_url": "https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/LSU/?uri=CELEX:32024R1689",
  "language": "EN",
  "as_of": null,
  "latest_consolidated_version_date": "2026-07-27",
  "text_version": "consolidated",
  "text_celex": "02024R1689-20260727",
  "consolidated_version_date": "2026-07-27",
  "text_notice": "This text is meant purely as a documentation tool and has no legal effect. The Union's institutions do not assume any liability for its contents. The authentic versions of the relevant acts, including their preambles, are those published in the Official Journal of the European Union and available in EUR-Lex. ...",
  "source_url": "https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:02024R1689-20260727",
  "cellar_url": "http://publications.europa.eu/resource/cellar/b1730fb2-8f1c-11f1-9262-01aa75ed71a1.0001.03/DOC_1",
  "amended_by": [
    {
      "celex": "32026R1744",
      "title": "Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 July 2026 amending Regulations (EU) 2024/1689, (EU) 2018/1139 and (EU) 2023/1230 as regards the simplification of the implementation of harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Digital Omnibus on AI) (Text with EEA relevance)",
      "date": "2026-07-08",
      "url": "https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32026R1744"
    }
  ],
  "corrected_by": [
    { "celex": "32024R1689R(04)", "title": null, "date": "2026-05-04", "url": "https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32024R1689R(04)" }
  ],
  "repealed_by": [],
  "implicitly_repealed_by": [],
  "amends": [
    { "celex": "32020L1828", "title": "Directive (EU) 2020/1828 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2020 on representative actions ...", "date": "2020-11-25", "url": "https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32020L1828" }
  ],
  "repeals": [],
  "implicitly_repeals": [],
  "article": "50",
  "paragraph": null,
  "article_title": "Transparency obligations for providers and deployers of certain AI systems",
  "article_text": "1. Providers shall ensure that AI systems intended to interact directly with natural persons are designed and developed in such a way that the natural persons concerned are informed that they are interacting with an AI system, ...\n2. Providers of AI systems, including general-purpose AI systems, generating synthetic audio, image, video or text content, shall ensure that the outputs of the AI system are marked in a machine-readable format ...\n...\n7. The Commission shall encourage and facilitate the drawing up of codes of practice at Union level ...",
  "article_text_truncated": false,
  "article_amended_by": [{ "celex": "32026R1744", "change": "replaced" }],
  "warnings": [],
  "retrieved_at": "2026-11-05T21:50:10+00:00",
  "duration_seconds": 0.7
}

• article_text: plain text, one line per paragraph or point, numbering kept (1., (a); German texts use (1)). Ask for a paragraph with "article": "6(1)".
• article_amended_by: in a consolidated text, the acts that changed this very article (from EUR-Lex's change markers).
• in_force, date_entry_into_force, entry_into_force_dates (staged application dates), date_end_of_validity: as EUR-Lex records them.
• amended_by / corrected_by / repealed_by / amends / repeals: each with CELEX, title, date and EUR-Lex link, newest first.
• source_url: the EUR-Lex page of the exact text version used; eli and eur_lex_url for the act itself.
• Without article: one row with table_of_contents (every article and its heading), articles_count, recitals_count and summary_url, so an agent can pick the article for a second call. The whole text only with "include": ["text"], cut at maxTextChars.

Input

{ "query": "AI Act", "article": "50", "language": "EN", "asOf": "2026-11-05" }

Field	Meaning
query	The act: GDPR, AI Act, DSA, NIS2, DORA, MiCA, CSRD... (short names for 42 well-known acts), Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Directive 95/46/EC, Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006, 2016/679, CELEX 32016R0679, ELI http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj, or AI Act Article 50
article	5, 6(1), 4a, or several: 5, 6(1) (max 10). Empty = act overview
language	Any of the 24 EU language codes; default EN
asOf	YYYY-MM-DD: the consolidated version that applied on that date. Default today
include	metadata (always), amendments (default), citing (acts and judgments citing it), text (whole act)
maxTextChars	Cap for article and act text, default 30000
ojSince, keywords, maxResults	Official Journal mode, see below

New acts in the Official Journal: {"ojSince": "2026-11-03", "keywords": "data, cyber"} lists every act published in the OJ L series since that date (max 31 days back), newest first, optionally only those whose title contains any keyword. One row (and one charge) per act, with the same metadata fields. Leave query empty in this mode.

Use from an AI agent (MCP)

Agents can call this Actor as a tool through the Apify MCP server. Add this server URL to your MCP client (Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ...):

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=bosco_labs/eu-law-lookup

It loads this Actor as a tool, plus the tools that read its results (get-actor-run, get-dataset-items). The hosted server signs you in with OAuth, or accepts your Apify token as Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>.

Example prompt: "What does Article 50 of the AI Act require today, and has it been amended? Quote the text and link the source." The agent passes:

{ "query": "AI Act", "article": "50" }

Output for agents: small JSON rows (typically 5-20 KB), stable snake_case fields, ISO dates, null for unknown, a EUR-Lex link for the act, the text version and every related act. warnings says in plain words when a fallback was used (another language, the OJ text instead of a consolidated version) or the act was not in force on asOf. A lookup takes about 1 second after start-up (measured 0.6-0.7 s for GDPR Art. 5 and AI Act Art. 50).

Cost: $0.005 per act or article returned, billed to the Apify account the MCP server is signed in with. Nothing is charged for a failed lookup.

FAQ

Where does the data come from? Only from the Publications Office of the EU, the publisher of EUR-Lex: its Cellar repository (SPARQL endpoint for metadata and relations, REST content negotiation for texts). Nothing else is added, and the text is not rewritten or summarised.

Is the consolidated text the law? No. Consolidated versions are, in EUR-Lex's own words, "a documentation tool" with no legal effect; only the texts published in the Official Journal are authentic. Every row with a consolidated text carries EUR-Lex's disclaimer in text_notice and links the authentic act in eur_lex_url. Ask with an asOf before the first consolidated version to get the OJ text itself.

Is this legal advice? No. It returns official texts and metadata as published; it does not interpret them. EUR-Lex itself states its information is not professional or legal advice.

Which acts work? Any act with a CELEX number in EUR-Lex: regulations, directives and decisions, corrigenda and consolidated versions. Article extraction works on all current texts; for some old acts (before about 2000) only an HTML text without article markup exists, and the last article may then include trailing headings. Annexes are not split out (use include: ["text"]).

How current is it? Live: every call reads Cellar directly. New OJ acts appear the day they are published; consolidated versions follow when the Publications Office produces them (days to weeks), so latest_consolidated_version_date can lag behind amended_by. in_force can be null for acts published in the last few days, before EUR-Lex has set it.

Why is a title null? Some corrigenda have no title in Cellar, and very new acts may not yet have one in every language.

Points like 6(1)(a)? The paragraph is returned whole; points are lines inside it.

Personal data? None is requested or returned beyond what the published legal acts contain. Signatory names in the metadata are not output.

Content: © European Union, https://eur-lex.europa.eu (reuse under Commission Decision 2011/833/EU; consolidated texts and editorial content under CC BY 4.0; metadata CC0). Text is converted from XHTML to plain text and long texts are cut where maxTextChars says; nothing else is changed.