Policy complexity in the European Union, 1993-today: introducing the EUPLEX dataset

Despite its importance for the sustainability of democratic governance, policy complexity is still an understudied phenomenon. What makes policies complex? Why are some policies more complex than others? And what are the consequences of this complexity for the political, economic and societal level? These questions still lack answers, which is both due to a lack of conceptual clarity and a lack of suitable data. In order to tackle these challenges, we introduce the EUPLEX dataset, comprising information on the complexity of more than 6,000 policy proposals adopted by the European Commission between 1993 and today. Relying on automated methods of data collection and natural language processing, EUPLEX allows us to compare the complexity of Commission proposals over time, across policy domains, and institutional and political configurations. The dataset will be updated continuously in the future as new policy proposals become available and is available free of charge to the research community.