Law / European Union / The Brussels ring
The Brussels ring
How the European Union and its 27 member states regulate software, across seven kinds of law. At the center are the 73 instruments the Union has made, 23 of them not yet in force, each for all 27 member states at once. Around them, each state's stack is the law LexLint holds for it, most first, clockwise from the top.
Each stripe is a kind of law and its length is how much of it LexLint holds. Rest on a stripe, or tap it, for the laws behind it; each opens its law note. Choose a kind of law in the key to pick it out around the whole ring.
What the stripes count
A figure is the law LexLint holds for that jurisdiction in that category: in force, not yet in force, or blocked by a court. Proposals are shown apart and ended law is not drawn. A member state's rows include EU law as it applies there. The Union's AI figure counts the AI Act's articles as rows. Seven kinds of law are drawn. Content moderation law, which the library also holds, is not among them, so a jurisdiction's page there can list more. A hatched gap is a cell the corpus has not researched yet; it is not a zero. In these seven kinds, 73 EU-wide instruments, 23 of them not yet in force, sit beside 523 laws across the 27 member states.
The Brussels ring was first made as a 24 by 24 inch wall print for the International AI Summit in Dublin. The print carries the counts of the day it was made; this page recounts on every build.
The same figures as a table
| Jurisdiction | AI | Privacy | Security | Age gating | Communications | Scraping | Reuse | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 European Union |
3022 not yet in force | 17 | 91 not yet in force | 3 | 3 | 7 | 4 | 73 |
 Italy |
11 | 8 | 2 | 3 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 39 |
 Germany |
1 | 7 | 2 | 31 not yet in force | 8 | 5 | 3 | 29 |
 France |
2 | 10 | 3 | 41 not yet in force | 3 | 2 | 3 | 27 |
 Ireland |
3 | 7 | 2 | 3 | 61 not yet in force | 3 | 1 | 25 |
 Spain |
1 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 8 | 3 | 3 | 25 |
 Sweden |
1 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 23 |
 Austria |
1 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 22 |
 Poland |
2 | 7 | 22 not yet in force | 2 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 22 |
 Malta |
2 | 7 | 41 not yet in force | 1 | – | 6 | 1 | 21 |
 Netherlands |
1 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 21 |
 Belgium |
0 | 10 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 18 |
 Czech Republic |
2 | 7 | 2 | 2 | – | 3 | 2 | 18 |
 Latvia |
1 | 7 | 3 | 2 | – | 3 | 2 | 18 |
 Finland |
2 | 7 | 3 | 1 | – | 3 | 1 | 17 |
 Hungary |
2 | 7 | 2 | 2 | – | 3 | 1 | 17 |
 Lithuania |
2 | 7 | 2 | 1 | – | 1 | 4 | 17 |
 Cyprus |
1 | 7 | 3 | 1 | – | 3 | 1 | 16 |
 Slovenia |
2 | 7 | 21 not yet in force | 2 | – | 1 | 2 | 16 |
 Denmark |
1 | 7 | 2 | 1 | – | 3 | 1 | 15 |
 Estonia |
0 | 7 | 2 | 1 | – | 3 | 2 | 15 |
 Greece |
1 | 7 | 2 | 1 | – | 2 | 2 | 15 |
 Luxembourg |
0 | 7 | 2 | 1 | – | 3 | 2 | 15 |
 Portugal |
0 | 7 | 2 | 1 | – | 3 | 2 | 15 |
 Slovakia |
1 | 71 not yet in force | 2 | 1 | – | 2 | 2 | 15 |
 Bulgaria |
0 | 71 not yet in force | 2 | 1 | – | 2 | 2 | 14 |
 Croatia |
1 | 7 | 2 | 1 | – | 2 | 1 | 14 |
 Romania |
1 | 71 not yet in force | 2 | 1 | – | 2 | 1 | 14 |
More on software law in the European Union
- The European Union's own page, with every instrument it holds and the research behind it.
- Software law in the European Union, on a map, as each law started to bind and into the coming years.
- The law map, every jurisdiction LexLint tracks.