When the law moved

Every instrument moves twice: once when it becomes law, and once when it starts to bind.

A dated archive of how EU digital regulation moved, from the Product Liability Directive of 1985 to the application dates still ahead: proposed, agreed, adopted, in force, applied, delayed, amended, withdrawn. Every date is graded against the document that asserts it, and every event states what the milestone does not bind, because the boundary of an instrument is as much a finding as its content.

Companion to Europe's sovereign full stack, which maps where Europe holds, and Where the sovereign euro goes, which follows the money. This page holds the dates.

Pick an area or an instrument, or search the record. Each event names the move, the date it carries, and what that move did not bind. The boundary of an instrument is as much a finding as its content.

How to read it

proposal · political agreement: the text is in motion; nothing binds yet adoption · entry into force: the instrument is law; obligations may still be dormant application: obligations start to bind delay · amendment: a later act moves or changes what was due withdrawal · repeal: the instrument leaves the stage guidance: non-binding, shaping compliance in practice enforcement: a dated enforcement step against non-compliance

Every date is graded. Verified means the primary document was opened and read at the passage asserting it. Reported means the primary text could not be reached and the claim rests on the named secondary source; a reported event wears a dashed chip and names that source. Dates are claims, and precision is part of the claim: an event the record only supports to a month or a year is shown at that precision rather than pretending to a day.

Every event states what it does not bind. The recurring shape in this field is an instrument that tests establishment and stops before the silicon; naming that boundary explicitly, event by event, is this publication's editorial position, and the boxed line inside each card carries it.

Depth is deliberately asymmetric. The horizontal and sovereignty-relevant instruments carry full event chains, from proposal to application and whatever happened after. Sector overlays (medical devices, machinery, the financial cluster, the border IT systems) carry adoption and application only, as context.

A date still ahead is a schedule, not a record. Events dated after today are the law's own calendar, transposition deadlines and staged application dates, and wear a dotted chip until they happen.

The player folds silence. The strip view keeps the time axis true to scale, so the dense years read dense; any span longer than three years without an event is folded behind a marked seam that names the years it removes. The line marked today separates record from schedule.