Creating and Analysing Linked Open Data for the
EU Parliament
Laura Hollink
Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI)
Information Access Group
June 7, 2017
DG ITEC European Parliament visit to CWI

Information Access group: Big Data Variety and
Veracity
Combining Linked Open Data / Semantic Web technology
with Statistical approaches for:
• Web scale data integration, with provenance tracking
“where did my data come from?”
• Modelling multiple perspectives on the same data
“how is the same event covered in different datasets?”
• Pattern discovery in digital traces of user behavior
“how is my data being used?”

Linked Open Data
A method of publishing structured data on the
Web in such a way that it can be linked and used
by machines as well as people.
http://5stardata.info
• https://www.data.gov/
• https://data.gov.uk/
• http://dati.camera.it/
• http://opendata.cz/
• https://www.data.gv.at/
• https://data.overheid.nl/
• https://data.europa.eu/

Linked Open Data about the EP Plenary
http://www.europarl.europa.eu

Data Structure
A speech
Pat Cox
datespeaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
An session day
partOf

Data Structure
A speech
Pat Cox
datespeaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
An session day
partOf
All speeches by
MEP Pat Cox in
May 2004, with
“Formal Opening”
in the title.

A speech
...This is indeed a
homecoming...@en
Pat Cox
date
text
speaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
...Dette er i høj grad
en hjemkomst...@da
"Loud and sustained
applause"@en
unclassified
Metadata
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
videoURI
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
Ireland
country
The next speech
next
An session day
partOf
Data Structure
A speech
Pat Cox
datespeaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
An session day
partOf
All speeches by
MEP Pat Cox in
May 2004, with
“Formal Opening”
in the title.

A speech
...This is indeed a
homecoming...@en
Pat Cox
date
text
speaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
...Dette er i høj grad
en hjemkomst...@da
"Loud and sustained
applause"@en
unclassified
Metadata
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
videoURI
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
Ireland
country
The next speech
next
An session day
partOf
Data Structure
A speech
Pat Cox
datespeaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
An session day
partOf
A speech
...This is indeed a
homecoming...@en
Pat Cox
date
text
speaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
...Dette er i høj grad
en hjemkomst...@da
"en"
language
"Loud and sustained
applause"@en
unclassified
Metadata
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
videoURI
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
Ireland
country
The next speech
next
translated
An session day
partOf
All speeches by
MEP Pat Cox in
May 2004, with
“Formal Opening”
in the title.

A speech
...This is indeed a
homecoming...@en
Pat Cox
date
text
speaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
...Dette er i høj grad
en hjemkomst...@da
"Loud and sustained
applause"@en
unclassified
Metadata
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
videoURI
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
Ireland
country
The next speech
next
An session day
partOf
Data Structure
A speech
Pat Cox
datespeaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
An session day
partOf
A speech
...This is indeed a
homecoming...@en
Pat Cox
date
text
speaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
...Dette er i høj grad
en hjemkomst...@da
"en"
language
"Loud and sustained
applause"@en
unclassified
Metadata
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
videoURI
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
Ireland
country
The next speech
next
translated
An session day
partOf
All speeches by
MEP Pat Cox in
May 2004, with
“Formal Opening”
in the title.
All speeches
mentioning
“homecoming”

A speech
...This is indeed a
homecoming...@en
Pat Cox
date
text
speaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
...Dette er i høj grad
en hjemkomst...@da
"Loud and sustained
applause"@en
unclassified
Metadata
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
videoURI
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
Ireland
country
The next speech
next
An session day
partOf
Data Structure
A speech
Pat Cox
datespeaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
An session day
partOf
A speech
...This is indeed a
homecoming...@en
Pat Cox
date
text
speaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
...Dette er i høj grad
en hjemkomst...@da
"en"
language
"Loud and sustained
applause"@en
unclassified
Metadata
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
videoURI
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
Ireland
country
The next speech
next
translated
An session day
partOf
All speeches by
MEP Pat Cox in
May 2004, with
“Formal Opening”
in the title.
All speeches
mentioning
“homecoming”
All speeches by
someone from
Ireland

A speech
...This is indeed a
homecoming...@en
Pat Cox
date
text
speaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
...Dette er i høj grad
en hjemkomst...@da
"Loud and sustained
applause"@en
unclassified
Metadata
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
videoURI
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
Ireland
country
The next speech
next
An session day
partOf
Data Structure
A speech
Pat Cox
datespeaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
An session day
partOf
A speech
...This is indeed a
homecoming...@en
Pat Cox
date
text
speaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
...Dette er i høj grad
en hjemkomst...@da
"en"
language
"Loud and sustained
applause"@en
unclassified
Metadata
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
videoURI
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
Ireland
country
The next speech
next
translated
An session day
partOf
All speeches by
MEP Pat Cox in
May 2004, with
“Formal Opening”
in the title.
All speeches
mentioning
“homecoming”
All speeches by
someone from
Ireland
All speeches
originally in Danish

A speech
...This is indeed a
homecoming...@en
Pat Cox
date
text
speaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
...Dette er i høj grad
en hjemkomst...@da
"Loud and sustained
applause"@en
unclassified
Metadata
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
videoURI
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
Ireland
country
The next speech
next
An session day
partOf
Data Structure
A speech
Pat Cox
datespeaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
An session day
partOf
A speech
...This is indeed a
homecoming...@en
Pat Cox
date
text
speaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
...Dette er i høj grad
en hjemkomst...@da
"en"
language
"Loud and sustained
applause"@en
unclassified
Metadata
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
videoURI
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
Ireland
country
The next speech
next
translated
An session day
partOf
All speeches by
MEP Pat Cox in
May 2004, with
“Formal Opening”
in the title.
All speeches
mentioning
“homecoming”
All speeches by
someone from
Ireland
All speeches
originally in Danish
All speeches that
have no
translations

A speech
...This is indeed a
homecoming...@en
Pat Cox
date
text
speaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
...Dette er i høj grad
en hjemkomst...@da
"Loud and sustained
applause"@en
unclassified
Metadata
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
videoURI
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
Ireland
country
The next speech
next
An session day
partOf
Data Structure
A speech
Pat Cox
datespeaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
An session day
partOf
A speech
...This is indeed a
homecoming...@en
Pat Cox
date
text
speaker
2004-05-03
Formal opening of
the first sitting of
the enlarged
European
Parliamenttitle
An item on the
agenda
partOf
...Dette er i høj grad
en hjemkomst...@da
"en"
language
"Loud and sustained
applause"@en
unclassified
Metadata
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
videoURI
MemberOf
Parliament
rdf:type
Ireland
country
The next speech
next
translated
An session day
partOf
All speeches by
MEP Pat Cox in
May 2004, with
“Formal Opening”
in the title.
All speeches
mentioning
“homecoming”
All speeches by
someone from
Ireland
All speeches
originally in Danish
All speeches that
have no
translations
All speeches where
someone replied to
someone from
Ireland in a debate
about the Financial
Crisis

Links to external sourcesA speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Ireland
country

Links to external sourcesA speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Geonames:IrelandIreland owl:sameAs
4,622,917 EUR1,038m
population
currencyhighest mountain
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Ireland
country

Links to external sourcesA speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Geonames:IrelandIreland owl:sameAs
4,622,917 EUR1,038m
population
currencyhighest mountain
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Ireland
country
How many times
did the countries
with the highest
population count
speak about
“regufees”?

Links to external sourcesA speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Geonames:IrelandIreland owl:sameAs
4,622,917 EUR1,038m
population
currencyhighest mountain
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Geonames:IrelandIreland owl:sameAs
4,622,917 EUR1,038m
http://dbpedia.org/
resource/Pat_Cox
owl:sameAs
28-11-1952
Trinity College
Dublin
journalist
population
currencyhighest mountain
birthdate alma mater rdf:type
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Ireland
country
How many times
did the countries
with the highest
population count
speak about
“regufees”?

Links to external sourcesA speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Geonames:IrelandIreland owl:sameAs
4,622,917 EUR1,038m
population
currencyhighest mountain
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Geonames:IrelandIreland owl:sameAs
4,622,917 EUR1,038m
http://dbpedia.org/
resource/Pat_Cox
owl:sameAs
28-11-1952
Trinity College
Dublin
journalist
population
currencyhighest mountain
birthdate alma mater rdf:type
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Ireland
country
How many times
did the countries
with the highest
population count
speak about
“regufees”?
Are there MEPs born
outside Europe?

Links to external sourcesA speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Geonames:IrelandIreland owl:sameAs
4,622,917 EUR1,038m
population
currencyhighest mountain
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Geonames:IrelandIreland owl:sameAs
4,622,917 EUR1,038m
http://dbpedia.org/
resource/Pat_Cox
owl:sameAs
28-11-1952
Trinity College
Dublin
journalist
population
currencyhighest mountain
birthdate alma mater rdf:type
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Geonames:IrelandIreland owl:sameAs
4,622,917 EUR1,038m
http://dbpedia.org/
resource/Pat_Cox
owl:sameAs
28-11-1952
Trinity College
Dublin
journalist
population
currencyhighest mountain
birthdate alma mater rdf:type
EP on dati.camera.it
owl:sameAs
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Ireland
country
How many times
did the countries
with the highest
population count
speak about
“regufees”?
Are there MEPs born
outside Europe?

Links to external sourcesA speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Geonames:IrelandIreland owl:sameAs
4,622,917 EUR1,038m
population
currencyhighest mountain
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Geonames:IrelandIreland owl:sameAs
4,622,917 EUR1,038m
http://dbpedia.org/
resource/Pat_Cox
owl:sameAs
28-11-1952
Trinity College
Dublin
journalist
population
currencyhighest mountain
birthdate alma mater rdf:type
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Geonames:IrelandIreland owl:sameAs
4,622,917 EUR1,038m
http://dbpedia.org/
resource/Pat_Cox
owl:sameAs
28-11-1952
Trinity College
Dublin
journalist
population
currencyhighest mountain
birthdate alma mater rdf:type
EP on dati.camera.it
owl:sameAs
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
Ireland
country
How many times
did the countries
with the highest
population count
speak about
“regufees”?
Are there MEPs born
outside Europe?
What role do
Italian MEPs
have in Italy?

Links to external sources
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
country

Links to external sources
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
President 2004
2002
politicalFunction
European
parliamant
vice-chair ELDE
politicalFunction
role institution
end
1998
beginning
1994
substitute
Committee on
Budgetary Control
politicalFunction
role institution
end
1992
beginning
1989
end
beginning
role institution
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
country

Links to external sources
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
President 2004
2002
politicalFunction
European
parliamant
vice-chair ELDE
politicalFunction
role institution
end
1998
beginning
1994
substitute
Committee on
Budgetary Control
politicalFunction
role institution
end
1992
beginning
1989
end
beginning
role institution
How did the
members of the
Human Rights
committee speak
about “refugees”?
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
country

Links to external sources
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
President 2004
2002
politicalFunction
European
parliamant
vice-chair ELDE
politicalFunction
role institution
end
1998
beginning
1994
substitute
Committee on
Budgetary Control
politicalFunction
role institution
end
1992
beginning
1989
end
beginning
role institution
How did the
members of the
Human Rights
committee speak
about “refugees”?
A speech
Pat Cox
speaker
country
Who was a member
of more than three
committees at the
same time?

What we have now:
linked open government data
for the EP
1. a dataset in structured, standard web-formats ready for download
2. links to external sources (that use these same standard web-formats)
3. a web service where the data can be queried (using a web-standard
query language), in combination with these external sources.
People can build on this by building apps, creating links.
links made
by the EC
Talk of Europe project:
http://talkofeurope.eu/

Example queries
on top of ‘Talk of Europe’ Linked Open Data

Example query: number of speeches per country
AT BE BG CY CZ DE DK EE ES FI FR GB GR HR HU IE IT LT LU LV MT NL PL PT RO SE SI SK
Mentions of 'human rights' by country
01000200030004000500060007000

The number of speeches translated per language
0
10000
20000
30000
2000 2005 2010 2015
year
scount
g
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Estonian
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hungarian
Italian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Maltese
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Slovak
Slovenian
Spanish
Swedish

Example query: number of debates with the topics
nuclear weapon / nuclear energy, per language

Example query: MEPs born outside Europe
Members of Parliament
(DBpedia contains info on
birthplace, birth date, schools,
careers, residence, family, etc. )

Some example applications that we have created
on top of Linked Open Data

PoliMedia: linking news to parliament
is about
• 3 Million links
is about
Transcriptions of meetings
of the Dutch parliament

PoliMedia: linking news to parliament
http://polimedia.nl/

ION Data
1. We crawled 5
newspapers for a year
2. Detected topics
3. Published it as
Linked Open Data
4. Built an application on
top
Article URL
Image caption Image featuresExtracted topics
Date Headline
Image URL
Contents of the ION corpus
Washington
Post
New York
Times
Daily Mail
The Inde-
pendent
Huffington
Post
Country
Nr. of articles 87.457 57.747 86.095 23.974 68.434
Nr. of images 54.063 42.613 83.269 21.272 34.874
Nr. of topics detected (Wikipedia pages) 491.513 371.680 368.302 98.610 245.829
Nr. of topics detected (categories) 1.730.271 1.280.850 1.554.609 497.981 1.232.599

ION application: comparing newspaper coverage
http://ion.project.cwi.nl/

ION application: comparing newspaper coverage
http://ion.project.cwi.nl/

On our wish-list: linking news to the EP debates
"Slovenia" in the plenary meetings of the European Parliament
Year
Nr.ofmentions
020406080100
1999 2000 2001 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2010 2011 2012 2013

On our wish-list: linking news to the EP debates
"Slovenia" in the plenary meetings of the European Parliament
Year
Nr.ofmentions
020406080100
1999 2000 2001 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2010 2011 2012 2013

Collaborators
Jacco van Ossenbruggen
Laura Hollink
Marnix van Berchum
Martijn Kleppe Max Kemman Jill Briggeman
Henri Beunders Jan Odijk Steven Krauwer
Astrid van Aggelen

Talk of Europe project: http://talkofeurope.eu/
Talk of Europe data: purl.org/linkedpolitics
Talk of Europe project video: https://youtu.be/GxA53gkCe0o
PoliMedia demo: http://polimedia.nl/
PoliMedia project video: https://youtu.be/u24oRCj7xrQ
ION demo: http://ion.project.cwi.nl/
My website: http://cwi.nl/~hollink/
A. van Aggelen, L. Hollink, M. Kemman, M. Kleppe & H. Beunders. The debates
of the European Parliament as Linked Open Data. Semantic Web Journal, pp.
1-10, DOI: 10.3233/SW-160227, 2017.
M. Kleppe, L. Hollink, J. Oomen, M. Kenman, D. Juric, J. Blom, H. Beunders.
PoliMedia - Improving the Analyses of Radio & Newspaper coverage of Political
Debates. First prize winner of the LinkedUp Veni Competition at the Open
Knowledge Conference (OKCon), Geneva, September 2013.
I’d be happy to answer any questions
L. Hollink, A. Bedjeti, M. van Harmelen and D. Elliott. A Corpus of Images and
Text in Online News. In proceedings of the 10th edition of the Language
Resources and Evaluation Conference, 23-28 May 2016, Portorož, Slovenia